Good Dirt

While many kidnapped Africans and enslaved persons were forced to labor as field workers or domestic servants on American plantations dedicated to growing cotton, sugar cane, or tobacco, many African Americans during the colonial antebellum period (before the Civil War) were skilled laborers. In addition to providing food, they worked as weavers, wood carvers, metal workers, carpenters, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths. Enslaved persons were sometimes apprenticed in skilled trades like cabinet-making or printing and engraving, or they were assigned to work as gold or silver smiths. Workers with specific skills were assigned a higher purchase value than those who were forced into unskilled labor. While the skilled workers were compelled to produce goods for their farm, with the surplus being sold for the famer’s profit, some artists and craftsmen were allowed a portion of the sales of their work. Sometimes the artisan could earn enough from their creations to eventually buy their own freedom.

In some cases, the person’s skill was derived from their country or culture of origin. For example, the Mandé and Wolof peoples of West Africa knew advanced blacksmithing techniques, and Wilkerson references their knowledge in the novel. Some African Americans used African coiling techniques in making baskets and traditional African designs in pots made for personal use. While arts and crafts that reflected the original or traditional cultures of displaced Africans might not have been assigned value by white consumers, many meaningful items have survived, including drums and other stringed instruments, vessels made for personal use, and funeral ornaments.

One craft that blends artistry with practical use and has become greatly celebrated is quilting, and the examples that survive from this period often blend African cultural motifs and methods of construction, like appliqué, with European methods. African American women made quilts that were both utilitarian and decorative, and many such pieces have since become valuable historical artifacts. For some enslaved women, selling their work became a way to negotiate their own liberty. For example, Lizzie Hobbs Keckley purchased her freedom and was later employed as a seamstress by Mary Todd Lincoln. A belief persists that because literacy was prohibited among enslaved people, the quilts featured embedded codes, information, and even maps that were used along the Underground Railroad to help guide those seeking the path to freedom.

In her Author’s Note (349), Wilkerson references renowned potter Dave Drake, who lived in South Carolina and worked in a pottery mill that produced the unique, alkaline-glazed stoneware that the Edgefield district became known for, due to the clay in the local soil. Over the decades spanning the 1830s to the 1860s (and both during his enslavement and afterward), Drake produced hundreds of items that he marked with his name and the date, along with other occasional inscriptions. His pots ranged in size from small vessels to jugs that held up to 40 gallons. A 20-gallon jar, the size of Old Mo, typically stood around two feet high.

Before the advent of the Civil War, stoneware production in the Edgefield District had become a massive undertaking, with up to a dozen potteries across the district producing vessels on an industrial scale. One unique ware of the Edgefield district is the “face jug” or “face vessel.” These jars depict stylized faces and were likely to have served less as utilitarian ware than as objects with decorative, ritual, or even spiritual value. Face vessels have been traced to people who, like Willis, escaped enslavement or later came north to escape the violence being perpetrated against freed African Americans. These artifacts are now considered items of historical value and are found both in museums and in the possession of private collectors.