July 25, 2024 • 27 mins
Sometimes being nosy pays off. In today's episode, Katie and Yves discuss eavesdropping, punkah fans, and small acts of resistance.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get
into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving
connecting with y'all over black storytelling, and if you've really
been loving the show, then we would really appreciate it
if you would leave us a rating and review, subscribe
to the show, and share it with your friends. Thanks y'all.
Now time for the episode. On theme is a production
(00:22):
of iHeartRadio and fair Weather Friends Media. Okay, Katie, close
(00:50):
your eyes. I want you to put yourself back in
eighteen forty five of what.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I know. But stay with me. Okay. Right, You're in Natchez, Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So you're right on the Mississippi River and it's the
dead middle of summer, so you're practically melting. The smell
of hot grass is floating in the air. The bugs
are out and about, and the air is still like
not a breezeen site.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You are making me a cheat, I know.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
And to add insult to injury, you're on the Mailrose Plantation. Well,
to be specific, you're in the dining room of the
main house.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You're enslavers.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
The hert sogs are having lunch with a few visitors.
They're laughing sharing stories, and your friends, who are also enslaved,
are entering the dining room. Occasionally they're dressed up in
fancy clothes and they're serving the visitors, and you're enslavers
elaborate meals. You know, the hert sogs have to show
(01:58):
off how wealthy and uppity they are to their esteemed guests.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Okay, okay, hurts ofs go off.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So they're stuffing their faces to their hearts content. But you,
on the other hand, you can feel hunger rising from
the pit of your stomach, and like your friends, you
are working. You're operating the punka, which is a large
ornate wooden fan that hangs from the ceiling in the
middle of the room, and you're sweating as you use
(02:28):
both hands to pull the cord to the punka, but
you have no choice. The fan swings back and forth,
keeping the dinner guests cool and keeping flies away from
the food. You're struggling, okay, but nobody's paying you any
attention anyway. It's a task that makes you miserable. But
(02:49):
there is one upside. You get to hear everything. The
happy chatty diners are saying, I'm Katie and I'm Eves
today's episode minding their business, So being nosy can be
frowned upon. Sometimes being a nosy neighbor is not seen
(03:09):
as a good thing. Black folks say they like to
mind their business and don't want others and theirs. But
you know, sometimes it campaign to be intensely observant, you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
But you know I keep my ears to the streets.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Do you are you a nosy person?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Girl?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
If you look up nosy picture right there, there's me
first definition.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So why do you hold being nosy in such high esteem?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Seemingly well, I feel like when you're really observant, you
be peeping shit like way before other people keep it
like people peep it, but they people too late. And
you're like, I been dow that, I've been knew that
by him. You're not surpriseding me. You think you got
some tea. This is some cold tea.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You're like, I already knew because I've been watching it.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I've been watching it. I just been you know. Oh,
you might not say nothing at first, but you just
keep it in your back pocket for a rainy day.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I feel you. So, do you remember those punka fans
we talked about.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I mean, yeah, you just had me operating them, sweetie fair.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, sorry I had to take you there. But those
were installed in some Antebellum plantation homes in the South
in the eighteen hundreds. Were they a common thing, Well,
punkahs weren't in every home, but they weren't in many
upper class white homes. People had to be able to
afford them to have them made, and because they had
(04:32):
to be manually operated, they had to have enough slaves
to be able to put someone on that very specific
tedious task.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So having a punkah and having someone to operate it
could be like a status symbol of sorts.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, exactly, and even more than that, it was an
ostentatious display of wealth. In some instances, the person operating
the fan would be in a back room, hidden away
from the visitors who were there. The visitors would get
their air and enjoy their meal without being burdened by
having to see the slave working while they ate because
(05:04):
God forbid. Okay, But most of the time with punkas,
the slaves were right there in plain sight.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
On purpose.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Enslavers wanted their guests to see the kinds of luxuries
that they could afford. They wanted to draw attention to
their custom punkahs and their frivolous use of laborers. But
the silver lining to this grueling job was proximity. Enslaved
people would have access to the conversations that white folks
were having over their meals.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
That meant that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Slaves could reflect that surveillance and exploitation that the elites
had subjected them to.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
So they took advantage of a bad situation with a
little espionage, a little intelligence gathering, if you will.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, And they did this in a couple of ways.
They used that time to gain insight on how the
elite moved, spoke, and behaved. So, like you were talking
about being nosy, you get a little extra information and
you can use it in your favor.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
They did that.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But when the conversations got a little bit more interesting,
slaves could pick up on information about events happening in
their communities and around the world. Doctor Dana E. Bird
talks about this in her twenty sixteen essay Mode of Power, Fans, Punkahs,
and fly Brushes in the Antebellum South. In the essay,
she points to a quote from Booker T. Washington's in
(06:18):
nineteen oh one autobiography, when I had grown to sufficient size.
I was required to go to the Big House at
meal times to fan the flies from the table by
means of a large set of paper fans operated by
a pulley. Naturally, much of the conversation of white people
turned upon the subject of freedom and the war, and
(06:40):
I absorbed a.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Good deal of it.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Washington doesn't talk about what he learned or what he
did with the information, but this shows that he did
retain information that he gathered while working the fans. Punkahs
were away in so while the white folks were care
free and loose with information, slaves were attentive in steadfast
about taking what they needed from the situation.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I'm really intrigued by the foolishness of white people, Like
I don't know, it's it's not like you like trusted
the people you're enslaving, But maybe you just thought they
were like so dumb or just like so loyal to
you or something. I don't know. Like me, if I'm
oppressing somebody all day, every day, twenty four or seven,
(07:25):
why I'm not gonna have them cooking my food, right,
And I'm not going to have them sit there while
I'm just talking, you know. But they did, and they
saw it as a flex I'm very intrigued by that,
like what was going on in that head? But I mean,
you have to be like sick in the head to
even enslaved people. So maybe it's just like, yeah, it's normal.
I guess yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think they saw that people were still being enslaved,
they saw that slavery was still a very widespread practice,
and they were like, this is working. So I guess
I have complete and total control over their minds. I'm
controlling everything they do on a every day basis. So
I guess there are still people to this day who
think that people enjoyed their slavery, like they were happy
be to be enslaved.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Giving them meals and.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Right, they were fine, they weren't.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They exaggerate all of these instances of a severe torture
that they're showing and trying to depict in like movies
and the expressions of slavery today. So I would imagine
that back then too, that was amplified even more so.
The cognitive dissonance that was happening for them was probably
very strong, sure, and had to exist for them to
keep enslaving people in the first place and doing things
(08:27):
like cooking, letting them cook for them. So I don't know, girl,
do I even want to dig that deeply into that
kind of psyche?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Do we want to do that I already had to
put maybe someone else that's their ministry. Maybe so.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
But I also think it's like fascinating, and doctor Bird
talks about this and her work just how there was
so much to this thing that was just an architectural
future of the home. Like there's class implications of it
from simply the white elite standpoint, because it's not like.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
All white people had it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I mean there were also class implications and quote unquote
owning slaves too, so that was part a factor in it.
But there's this separate history of the punkahs themselves being
constructed in different ways based on what somebody's class was.
So sometimes people would use this really nice, expensive mahogany
wood and sometimes they would use wallpaper, for instance, to
(09:20):
create these kinds of fans. So even the fans themselves
were able to symbolize different levels of wealth and class status.
On top of the fact of like what kind of
presence the slave had there, Like was it enslave person
in the room with them, or were they not in
the room with them. And also there were people who
acted as fans. So there's a layer of remove when
(09:43):
you're thinking about the punk of fans, because there is
a human who has to pull the cord there to
make the fan move. But then there were other people
who used large feathers to just fan over the food
when people didn't have punka fans, and that person would
sit in a swing above the table, taking that feather
and moving it back and forth in order to keep
(10:04):
the flies away from the food.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Is that what Berker T Washington was referred to or
was he doing the punk of fans?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I think he was doing the punk of fans by
the way that he described it. Operated by a pulley. Yes,
operated by a pulley, and that's what they were. There
were police, there were different kinds of pulleys. Sometimes they
were chained. Sometimes there were records. If you look at
the pictures and the descriptions which slave narratives, there are
descriptions of punkahs and of people doing the fanning. And
there was one slave narrative. I can't remember who the
(10:32):
enslaved person was who told this narrative. I'm sure it
was a common occurrence. They were talking about how when
they would use these large feather fans. What he said
in the narrative was like, if I wasn't minding my business,
then this large feather that I was fanning over the
people might end up dipping into their food.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
If I was like falling asleep, or.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I wasn't being attentive enough, if I wasn't minding my business,
then they would be like, what you're doing, Yeah, get
on your job.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I'm sure they wouldn't say it that nicely.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So we know that covert communication was one way that
enslaved people planned escapes and resistance efforts. Written and verbal
communication were encrypted. One kind of covert communication that many
people are probably familiar with is song. A song's tempo
and lyrics could have hidden meanings, providing refugee slaves with
instructions as they made their way to freedom. For instance,
(11:35):
runaways traveling on the underground railroad were called passengers, and
safe houses were called stations, and sometimes enslaved people opted
to change the language all together. For example, people could
speak Creole with one another and pass along important information
right under enslaver's noses. Messages were also hidden in quilts
(11:56):
and in riddles, and of course spying was one way
that black folks gathered valuable intail. So think of Harriet Tubman. Okay,
we've heard of Harriet Tubman, the spy. We know that
that's one thing that she did. She got information from
enslaved people about Confederate maneuvers, and then she took that
intelligence to union forces. And that begs the question, how
(12:19):
did those enslaved people get that information easdrop it?
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yes, so it's not.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Like Confederate soldiers were sharing this information with slaves intentionally
and freely. Enslaved people were just present and they were listening.
Evesdropping was such a simple form of resistance, but it
was powerful and subversive. White folks desire to keep their
servants close could end up being the reason for their downfall.
(12:46):
Even when they were quiet, Enslaved people were not just
silent and submissive. Evesdropping was a form of indirect resistance.
The enslaved people and the enslavers still went about their
day to day big business in the meantime. The work
didn't topple the institution of slavery, but slaves shared the
information that they gleaned while they worked, and this could
(13:08):
help make their lives easier under the horrible and oppressive circumstances.
It could also just help keep them more informed. So
did the enslavers just have loose lips? You would think
they would try to make sure our folks wasn't getting
their sensitive information. They did try to guard information a
lot of the time. They were careful about how much
(13:28):
they said around their slaves. But imagine how isolated enslaved
people were on plantations. It was hard for them to
learn what was going on outside the very small bubble
they were given access to, so they were motivated to
get news about their communities and the world beyond. In
an interview for the Federal Writers Project of the Works
(13:49):
Progress Administration, a former slave named Benjamin Russell said the following,
how did we get news? Many plantations were strict about this,
But the greater the precaution, the alerter became the slaves,
the wider they opened their ears, and the more eager
they became for outside information. The sources were girls that
(14:11):
waited on the tables, the ladies, maids, and the drivers.
They would pick up everything they heard and pass it
on to the other slaves. News already took a while
to travel for free folks, so it could be really
delayed in getting to enslaved people, if it ever did
at all. This was the case with news about the
Civil War. Many enslaved people couldn't read and had to
(14:33):
get news about the war through word of mouth. A
lot of enslavers didn't want them talking about the war
in the first place, and if they did share news,
it was actually propaganda.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
But the outcome of the Civil War would determine the
course of their lives, so slaves had to be eager
to get the real facts, and.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
They were so.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Some of the people who were around for their enslavers'
private conversations kept their ears open when they were in
the Big House and on the plantation grounds. Here's what
a former slave named Elizabeth Russell said. I was very
small at the time of the Civil War, yet I
served my people as a secret service agent. I was
(15:13):
kept in the Big House during the day to rock
and attend the babies, and I would often pretend to
be asleep and hear the folk at the Big House
were saying about the battles and which side was winning
or losing. And when the word came that the North
had won and the slaves were free. It was I
who carried the word to the hundreds of slaves in
our section, having crawled to my mother's cabin to give
(15:35):
the news. And though only a little child, God used
me as a bearer of good news to my people.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
That's a word. She had a testimony. She did.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
She had a testimony.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And it was often the case that it was women
who ended up in these roles of being the people
who were around for conversations because of the kinds of
jobs that they were doing that they were in these
more I guess, intimate roles where they're around for us.
These conversations that were supposed to just be between two
people are supposed to be smaller conversations, and they were
able to listen. They were in these servant roles where
(16:08):
they could linger a little longer and it wouldn't look
suspicious or even pretend to be sleep exactly. You know,
they love to use that as a plot point in
a movie or a TV show. Have one eye open.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Also, I feel like Elizabeth quote really kind of dispelled
the notion that there was like beef between the house
slaves and the field slaves, and house slaves thought they
were so much better and were really in allegiance with
white people because maybe they was half white or whatever,
like they were getting the intel and tipping back out
and telling everybody what was going on.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
She also talks about how young she was and how
she was already thinking about the ways that she could
offer resistance in the ways that was available to her.
And I think that is one of the things about eavesdropping,
is how democratized it could be. You know, no matter
how young you are. Yeah, everybody knows.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Probably the younger you are, the more things people say
around you, because I think you don't understand.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Probably so, And I do wonder how you know, somebody
might be more want to trust a woman in terms of,
like today committing a crime, like you wouldn't necessarily suspect
somebody of some sort of a woman of a violent crime,
so it's easier for them to get away with it
if it was like that in a gendered way when
it came to eavesdropping as well, I don't know. And
(17:27):
so there was also the fact that a lot of
enslaved people couldn't read and they couldn't write, but there
was information that was being passed along through written notes.
A lot of the time so sometimes what would happen
is they would gather info. Even though they couldn't read
the info that was written, they would still, like when
(17:49):
somebody was writing, when they were talking about it, they
could pick up on info about that note in that
moment or when it was being read to the person
who picked up that note. So they found ways around
their inability to read and are write. And because the
enslavers knew that enslaved people couldn't read or write, they
would try to find their own ways around that through
(18:10):
covert messaging, so that when the enslavers were mindful, like hey,
I don't want the slaves to hear this, they would
sometimes try to do things like spell out the messages
that they were giving people, like physically spell letter by
letter what they were saying, and they'll be like, oh,
you know, the slave isn't going to understand that they
can't write, they don't understand how to spell. But then
they would remember what they spelled and take it to
(18:32):
somebody else who could translate that for them, right, so
they could still understand the message and pass it along
if they wanted to.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, that's what you doing a little kids.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, And they probably be looking at you like, I
know what you're doing. I'd also think that makes it
more clear that whatever you're saying is something that I
need to.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Know, right, Because if you would have just said it
and kind of like it wasn't a big deal, maybe
I wouldn't have picked up on it. But now you
spell and stuff, right, I'm a peep.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right now, I know something's going on.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
More on eavesdropping after the break the Civil War was
a critical point for black people. Their futures in the
United States hung in the balance, so it makes sense
that black folks employed eavesdropping as a strategy for survival.
(19:25):
But in general, these oral and oral networks that enslaved
people relied on were crucial communication lines. The intelligence that
people gathered through evesdropping was funneled right into these networks,
and this made important information accessible to a population of
people who could not read but were orally literate.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
In a way, it seems like slaves weaponized a simple
act of flicity.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I think that's a good way to put it, because
they turned an unassuming act into a tool of resistance
and up from slavery.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Booker T.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Washington refers to the network that black folks used to
stay informed as the grapevine telegraph, and he talks about
how powerful it was and how it could work so
fast that slaves knew the results of battles before white
people did. In a story he tells, Washington talks about
how a black man was sent to the post office
a few miles away from the plantation once or twice
(20:20):
a week.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
The man who was sent to the.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Office would linger about the place long enough to get
the drift of the conversation from the group of white
people who naturally congregated there after receiving their mail to
discuss the latest news. The mail carrier, on his way
back to our master's house would as naturally retail the
news that he had secured among the slaves, and in
this way they often heard of important events before the
(20:45):
white people at the Big House, as the master's house
was called.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It seems like a fool proof method of knowledge sharing.
I know there was some risk involved, but I'd acted eavesdrop.
It was a part of daily life. Yeah, black folks
had to find ways to educate them. White folks were
constantly trying to find ways to restrict and falsify information
to keep black people ignorant. But like if you can't
(21:09):
read or write and your enslavers aren't telling you anything,
what are your options?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Okay, yes, let me tell you about John Quincy Adams.
And no, I'm not talking about the president. I'm talking
about a man who was enslaved in Virginia and escaped
slavery during the Civil War. He wrote about his life
in a book that was published in eighteen seventy two.
John couldn't read and write when he was young, but
when he heard white folks saying they didn't want black
(21:37):
people to learn to read and write, he figured it
must be worth learning. He would linger when he heard
someone reading, and when they asked him what he was doing,
he would say nothing. But of course he would relay
what he learned to his parents. And since eavesdropping was
a resistance tactic that everybody had the means to do,
(21:58):
his mom and dad told him, try to hear all
you can, but don't let them know it. So the
thing that I love about evesdropping is it feels like
a game of telephone, where one person learns a thing
and then it's able. Not telephone in the instance is
where the message gets changed, but just in the instance
in which you can pass information along from one person
(22:19):
into the next and to the next, and then it
becomes something that everybody knows, something.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
That everybody is aware of.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
And it can be for very small, menial things that
just make life a little bit better or make people
more informed, or it can be for these bigger things.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
It's about the Civil War.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
A lot of the instances that I could find of
eavesdropping is where people were talking about what news got
passed on of the Civil War. So obviously this act
of eavesdropping would be amplified in a time of such
heavy conflict that would impact everybody's lives in such a
big way. I think when we think about June teenth,
we think about how long it took for news to
(22:56):
get to Texas, And this is part of the conversation
that every body has when we talk about Juneteenth. But
that was one of a million, billion, trillion instances of
news getting to enslave people slowly that happened so many
times before then, and and things not related to the
Civil War or to emancipation, And it just feels like
(23:20):
there's a level of control and power that enslaved people
were able to take back in a way that that
was available to them. They were orally literate, so they
use what they could. They were like, I can't read
and I can't write, but I know the things that
I do have, and I know the power that I
do have, And they took that into their own hands.
They capitalized on that to be able to make their
lives better.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, and I imagine on the flip side, since they
were so versed in eavesdropping, they made sure like if
an overseer was around, or even if like the white
little kids playing with the black little kids when they
were allowed to still play with each other, they knew like, okay,
how we be eas dropping on them. Let's make sure
we don't say nothing around them that they could use
against us.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Right right, And that's where the acts of covert communication
and language comes in. They were like, I'm gonna learn
from the fact that these people are saying too much
around me, like I know what I don't need to
be saying around them. And the irony in that is that, like,
you know, enslaved people could speak the same language as them,
but we were able to form our own languages at
the same time that they couldn't understand.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
After they took away their original languages, right.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
So I think that it just seems like such a
small act that compounded over time because so many different
people were doing it in purposes that even though it
wasn't something that like immediately emancipated them, or it wasn't
something that necessarily killed their enslavers, it wasn't those kinds
of acts. But there are places for all these kinds
(24:45):
of acts, for the indirect action, for the direct action
that was happening. Eavesdropping didn't exist in a vacuum. It
wasn't in its own container. There were other people who
were taking up arms, and there were other people who
were forming rebellions.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
There were people who were maroons. They were all different.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Kinds poisoning people exactly. And there were all these other
indirect tactics as well, like when the enslaved people would
pit enslavers against one another, kind of like you know
reality TV conflict of making people distrustful of other people,
are implanting false information with people to invite more conflict
(25:21):
into the situation. There were all kinds of smaller things
that happen on a day to day basis. Of course,
it was still a horrible situation. They were still enslaved,
but ameliorate some of the suffering that they were enduring.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Now it is time for roll credits, the segment where
we give credit to a person, place, or think eves
who are what would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I would like to give credit to honeysuckle this week
because I have been seeing and smelling a lot of
honeysuckle around and there is some that is growing very
close to where I live, and I plan on going
and gathering some.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And then making some tea with it.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
But I just have fond memories of honeysuckle because I
used to just eat it off the bush when I
was young, and we had some in our neighborhood, and
my sister and I would take some off the bush
and we would eat it, and there's nostalgia that's associated
with it.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
To me, what do you give credit to today?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I would like to give credit to being influenced. I
feel like everyone be like I'm above the influence. I'm
impervious to advertisements and everything else. But I think it's
nice when you're like influenced to do something nice that
you really wasn't gonna do. I met this lady and
she had hit me up really out of the blue, like, oh,
I have some bugs, Like, can you take them from
my house? A older woman. So I went to her
(26:35):
house and I was just like, oh, I like your
plant and she's like thanks, and it was a big plant.
And when I was living, She's like, oh, here take this,
and it was like she's giving me this big plant
that like if you bought a food story, it'd be
like hundreds of dollars. And I was like, what's that's crazy?
But I was like, oh yeah, like I should do
that when people like show interest in plants, like I
have a lot of plants, like more than I need,
(26:56):
Like I should, you know, be more generous. So after
meeting up with her, I'll try to give people place
if they want them. A lot of people be like, girl,
I want that shit. But I was like, mister Rose,
you really influenced me to be nicer. So I would
like to give credit to you. It's Rose and to
be influenced to be better. That's nice And we'll see
(27:18):
y'all next week.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Bye y'all.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us
on Instagram at on Theme Show. You can also send
us an email at hello at on Theme dot Show.
Head to on Theme Dot Show to check out the
(27:43):
show notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows
Hey, y'all, Eve's here. I know you're ready to get
into this episode, but really quick. We have been loving
connecting with y'all over black storytelling, and if you've really
been loving the show, then we would really appreciate it
if you would leave us a rating and review, subscribe
to the show, and share it with your friends. Thanks y'all.
Now time for the episode. On theme is a production
(00:22):
of iHeartRadio and fair Weather Friends Media. Okay, Katie, close
(00:50):
your eyes. I want you to put yourself back in
eighteen forty five of what.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I know. But stay with me. Okay. Right, You're in Natchez, Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (01:04):
So you're right on the Mississippi River and it's the
dead middle of summer, so you're practically melting. The smell
of hot grass is floating in the air. The bugs
are out and about, and the air is still like
not a breezeen site.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You are making me a cheat, I know.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
And to add insult to injury, you're on the Mailrose Plantation. Well,
to be specific, you're in the dining room of the
main house.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
You're enslavers.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
The hert sogs are having lunch with a few visitors.
They're laughing sharing stories, and your friends, who are also enslaved,
are entering the dining room. Occasionally they're dressed up in
fancy clothes and they're serving the visitors, and you're enslavers
elaborate meals. You know, the hert sogs have to show
(01:58):
off how wealthy and uppity they are to their esteemed guests.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Okay, okay, hurts ofs go off.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
So they're stuffing their faces to their hearts content. But you,
on the other hand, you can feel hunger rising from
the pit of your stomach, and like your friends, you
are working. You're operating the punka, which is a large
ornate wooden fan that hangs from the ceiling in the
middle of the room, and you're sweating as you use
(02:28):
both hands to pull the cord to the punka, but
you have no choice. The fan swings back and forth,
keeping the dinner guests cool and keeping flies away from
the food. You're struggling, okay, but nobody's paying you any
attention anyway. It's a task that makes you miserable. But
(02:49):
there is one upside. You get to hear everything. The
happy chatty diners are saying, I'm Katie and I'm Eves
today's episode minding their business, So being nosy can be
frowned upon. Sometimes being a nosy neighbor is not seen
(03:09):
as a good thing. Black folks say they like to
mind their business and don't want others and theirs. But
you know, sometimes it campaign to be intensely observant, you
know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
But you know I keep my ears to the streets.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
Do you are you a nosy person?
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Girl?
Speaker 3 (03:26):
If you look up nosy picture right there, there's me
first definition.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
So why do you hold being nosy in such high esteem?
Speaker 3 (03:36):
Seemingly well, I feel like when you're really observant, you
be peeping shit like way before other people keep it
like people peep it, but they people too late. And
you're like, I been dow that, I've been knew that
by him. You're not surpriseding me. You think you got
some tea. This is some cold tea.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
You're like, I already knew because I've been watching it.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
I've been watching it. I just been you know. Oh,
you might not say nothing at first, but you just
keep it in your back pocket for a rainy day.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
I feel you. So, do you remember those punka fans
we talked about.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
I mean, yeah, you just had me operating them, sweetie fair.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Okay, sorry I had to take you there. But those
were installed in some Antebellum plantation homes in the South
in the eighteen hundreds. Were they a common thing, Well,
punkahs weren't in every home, but they weren't in many
upper class white homes. People had to be able to
afford them to have them made, and because they had
(04:32):
to be manually operated, they had to have enough slaves
to be able to put someone on that very specific
tedious task.
Speaker 3 (04:39):
So having a punkah and having someone to operate it
could be like a status symbol of sorts.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
Yeah, exactly, and even more than that, it was an
ostentatious display of wealth. In some instances, the person operating
the fan would be in a back room, hidden away
from the visitors who were there. The visitors would get
their air and enjoy their meal without being burdened by
having to see the slave working while they ate because
(05:04):
God forbid. Okay, But most of the time with punkas,
the slaves were right there in plain sight.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
On purpose.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
Enslavers wanted their guests to see the kinds of luxuries
that they could afford. They wanted to draw attention to
their custom punkahs and their frivolous use of laborers. But
the silver lining to this grueling job was proximity. Enslaved
people would have access to the conversations that white folks
were having over their meals.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
That meant that.
Speaker 1 (05:32):
Slaves could reflect that surveillance and exploitation that the elites
had subjected them to.
Speaker 3 (05:39):
So they took advantage of a bad situation with a
little espionage, a little intelligence gathering, if you will.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Yeah, And they did this in a couple of ways.
They used that time to gain insight on how the
elite moved, spoke, and behaved. So, like you were talking
about being nosy, you get a little extra information and
you can use it in your favor.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
They did that.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
But when the conversations got a little bit more interesting,
slaves could pick up on information about events happening in
their communities and around the world. Doctor Dana E. Bird
talks about this in her twenty sixteen essay Mode of Power, Fans, Punkahs,
and fly Brushes in the Antebellum South. In the essay,
she points to a quote from Booker T. Washington's in
(06:18):
nineteen oh one autobiography, when I had grown to sufficient size.
I was required to go to the Big House at
meal times to fan the flies from the table by
means of a large set of paper fans operated by
a pulley. Naturally, much of the conversation of white people
turned upon the subject of freedom and the war, and
(06:40):
I absorbed a.
Speaker 2 (06:41):
Good deal of it.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Washington doesn't talk about what he learned or what he
did with the information, but this shows that he did
retain information that he gathered while working the fans. Punkahs
were away in so while the white folks were care
free and loose with information, slaves were attentive in steadfast
about taking what they needed from the situation.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
I'm really intrigued by the foolishness of white people, Like
I don't know, it's it's not like you like trusted
the people you're enslaving, But maybe you just thought they
were like so dumb or just like so loyal to
you or something. I don't know. Like me, if I'm
oppressing somebody all day, every day, twenty four or seven,
(07:25):
why I'm not gonna have them cooking my food, right,
And I'm not going to have them sit there while
I'm just talking, you know. But they did, and they
saw it as a flex I'm very intrigued by that,
like what was going on in that head? But I mean,
you have to be like sick in the head to
even enslaved people. So maybe it's just like, yeah, it's normal.
I guess yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:43):
I think they saw that people were still being enslaved,
they saw that slavery was still a very widespread practice,
and they were like, this is working. So I guess
I have complete and total control over their minds. I'm
controlling everything they do on a every day basis. So
I guess there are still people to this day who
think that people enjoyed their slavery, like they were happy
be to be enslaved.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
Giving them meals and.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Right, they were fine, they weren't.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
They exaggerate all of these instances of a severe torture
that they're showing and trying to depict in like movies
and the expressions of slavery today. So I would imagine
that back then too, that was amplified even more so.
The cognitive dissonance that was happening for them was probably
very strong, sure, and had to exist for them to
keep enslaving people in the first place and doing things
(08:27):
like cooking, letting them cook for them. So I don't know, girl,
do I even want to dig that deeply into that
kind of psyche?
Speaker 3 (08:34):
Do we want to do that I already had to
put maybe someone else that's their ministry. Maybe so.
Speaker 1 (08:40):
But I also think it's like fascinating, and doctor Bird
talks about this and her work just how there was
so much to this thing that was just an architectural
future of the home. Like there's class implications of it
from simply the white elite standpoint, because it's not like.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
All white people had it.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
I mean there were also class implications and quote unquote
owning slaves too, so that was part a factor in it.
But there's this separate history of the punkahs themselves being
constructed in different ways based on what somebody's class was.
So sometimes people would use this really nice, expensive mahogany
wood and sometimes they would use wallpaper, for instance, to
(09:20):
create these kinds of fans. So even the fans themselves
were able to symbolize different levels of wealth and class status.
On top of the fact of like what kind of
presence the slave had there, Like was it enslave person
in the room with them, or were they not in
the room with them. And also there were people who
acted as fans. So there's a layer of remove when
(09:43):
you're thinking about the punk of fans, because there is
a human who has to pull the cord there to
make the fan move. But then there were other people
who used large feathers to just fan over the food
when people didn't have punka fans, and that person would
sit in a swing above the table, taking that feather
and moving it back and forth in order to keep
(10:04):
the flies away from the food.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Is that what Berker T Washington was referred to or
was he doing the punk of fans?
Speaker 1 (10:11):
I think he was doing the punk of fans by
the way that he described it. Operated by a pulley. Yes,
operated by a pulley, and that's what they were. There
were police, there were different kinds of pulleys. Sometimes they
were chained. Sometimes there were records. If you look at
the pictures and the descriptions which slave narratives, there are
descriptions of punkahs and of people doing the fanning. And
there was one slave narrative. I can't remember who the
(10:32):
enslaved person was who told this narrative. I'm sure it
was a common occurrence. They were talking about how when
they would use these large feather fans. What he said
in the narrative was like, if I wasn't minding my business,
then this large feather that I was fanning over the
people might end up dipping into their food.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
If I was like falling asleep, or.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
I wasn't being attentive enough, if I wasn't minding my business,
then they would be like, what you're doing, Yeah, get
on your job.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
I'm sure they wouldn't say it that nicely.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So we know that covert communication was one way that
enslaved people planned escapes and resistance efforts. Written and verbal
communication were encrypted. One kind of covert communication that many
people are probably familiar with is song. A song's tempo
and lyrics could have hidden meanings, providing refugee slaves with
instructions as they made their way to freedom. For instance,
(11:35):
runaways traveling on the underground railroad were called passengers, and
safe houses were called stations, and sometimes enslaved people opted
to change the language all together. For example, people could
speak Creole with one another and pass along important information
right under enslaver's noses. Messages were also hidden in quilts
(11:56):
and in riddles, and of course spying was one way
that black folks gathered valuable intail. So think of Harriet Tubman. Okay,
we've heard of Harriet Tubman, the spy. We know that
that's one thing that she did. She got information from
enslaved people about Confederate maneuvers, and then she took that
intelligence to union forces. And that begs the question, how
(12:19):
did those enslaved people get that information easdrop it?
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Yes, so it's not.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Like Confederate soldiers were sharing this information with slaves intentionally
and freely. Enslaved people were just present and they were listening.
Evesdropping was such a simple form of resistance, but it
was powerful and subversive. White folks desire to keep their
servants close could end up being the reason for their downfall.
(12:46):
Even when they were quiet, Enslaved people were not just
silent and submissive. Evesdropping was a form of indirect resistance.
The enslaved people and the enslavers still went about their
day to day big business in the meantime. The work
didn't topple the institution of slavery, but slaves shared the
information that they gleaned while they worked, and this could
(13:08):
help make their lives easier under the horrible and oppressive circumstances.
It could also just help keep them more informed. So
did the enslavers just have loose lips? You would think
they would try to make sure our folks wasn't getting
their sensitive information. They did try to guard information a
lot of the time. They were careful about how much
(13:28):
they said around their slaves. But imagine how isolated enslaved
people were on plantations. It was hard for them to
learn what was going on outside the very small bubble
they were given access to, so they were motivated to
get news about their communities and the world beyond. In
an interview for the Federal Writers Project of the Works
(13:49):
Progress Administration, a former slave named Benjamin Russell said the following,
how did we get news? Many plantations were strict about this,
But the greater the precaution, the alerter became the slaves,
the wider they opened their ears, and the more eager
they became for outside information. The sources were girls that
(14:11):
waited on the tables, the ladies, maids, and the drivers.
They would pick up everything they heard and pass it
on to the other slaves. News already took a while
to travel for free folks, so it could be really
delayed in getting to enslaved people, if it ever did
at all. This was the case with news about the
Civil War. Many enslaved people couldn't read and had to
(14:33):
get news about the war through word of mouth. A
lot of enslavers didn't want them talking about the war
in the first place, and if they did share news,
it was actually propaganda.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
But the outcome of the Civil War would determine the
course of their lives, so slaves had to be eager
to get the real facts, and.
Speaker 2 (14:50):
They were so.
Speaker 1 (14:52):
Some of the people who were around for their enslavers'
private conversations kept their ears open when they were in
the Big House and on the plantation grounds. Here's what
a former slave named Elizabeth Russell said. I was very
small at the time of the Civil War, yet I
served my people as a secret service agent. I was
(15:13):
kept in the Big House during the day to rock
and attend the babies, and I would often pretend to
be asleep and hear the folk at the Big House
were saying about the battles and which side was winning
or losing. And when the word came that the North
had won and the slaves were free. It was I
who carried the word to the hundreds of slaves in
our section, having crawled to my mother's cabin to give
(15:35):
the news. And though only a little child, God used
me as a bearer of good news to my people.
Speaker 3 (15:42):
That's a word. She had a testimony. She did.
Speaker 2 (15:45):
She had a testimony.
Speaker 1 (15:47):
And it was often the case that it was women
who ended up in these roles of being the people
who were around for conversations because of the kinds of
jobs that they were doing that they were in these
more I guess, intimate roles where they're around for us.
These conversations that were supposed to just be between two
people are supposed to be smaller conversations, and they were
able to listen. They were in these servant roles where
(16:08):
they could linger a little longer and it wouldn't look
suspicious or even pretend to be sleep exactly. You know,
they love to use that as a plot point in
a movie or a TV show. Have one eye open.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
Also, I feel like Elizabeth quote really kind of dispelled
the notion that there was like beef between the house
slaves and the field slaves, and house slaves thought they
were so much better and were really in allegiance with
white people because maybe they was half white or whatever,
like they were getting the intel and tipping back out
and telling everybody what was going on.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
She also talks about how young she was and how
she was already thinking about the ways that she could
offer resistance in the ways that was available to her.
And I think that is one of the things about eavesdropping,
is how democratized it could be. You know, no matter
how young you are. Yeah, everybody knows.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Probably the younger you are, the more things people say
around you, because I think you don't understand.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Probably so, And I do wonder how you know, somebody
might be more want to trust a woman in terms of,
like today committing a crime, like you wouldn't necessarily suspect
somebody of some sort of a woman of a violent crime,
so it's easier for them to get away with it
if it was like that in a gendered way when
it came to eavesdropping as well, I don't know. And
(17:27):
so there was also the fact that a lot of
enslaved people couldn't read and they couldn't write, but there
was information that was being passed along through written notes.
A lot of the time so sometimes what would happen
is they would gather info. Even though they couldn't read
the info that was written, they would still, like when
(17:49):
somebody was writing, when they were talking about it, they
could pick up on info about that note in that
moment or when it was being read to the person
who picked up that note. So they found ways around
their inability to read and are write. And because the
enslavers knew that enslaved people couldn't read or write, they
would try to find their own ways around that through
(18:10):
covert messaging, so that when the enslavers were mindful, like hey,
I don't want the slaves to hear this, they would
sometimes try to do things like spell out the messages
that they were giving people, like physically spell letter by
letter what they were saying, and they'll be like, oh,
you know, the slave isn't going to understand that they
can't write, they don't understand how to spell. But then
they would remember what they spelled and take it to
(18:32):
somebody else who could translate that for them, right, so
they could still understand the message and pass it along
if they wanted to.
Speaker 3 (18:40):
Yeah, that's what you doing a little kids.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Yeah, And they probably be looking at you like, I
know what you're doing. I'd also think that makes it
more clear that whatever you're saying is something that I
need to.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
Know, right, Because if you would have just said it
and kind of like it wasn't a big deal, maybe
I wouldn't have picked up on it. But now you
spell and stuff, right, I'm a peep.
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Right now, I know something's going on.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
More on eavesdropping after the break the Civil War was
a critical point for black people. Their futures in the
United States hung in the balance, so it makes sense
that black folks employed eavesdropping as a strategy for survival.
(19:25):
But in general, these oral and oral networks that enslaved
people relied on were crucial communication lines. The intelligence that
people gathered through evesdropping was funneled right into these networks,
and this made important information accessible to a population of
people who could not read but were orally literate.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
In a way, it seems like slaves weaponized a simple
act of flicity.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
I think that's a good way to put it, because
they turned an unassuming act into a tool of resistance
and up from slavery.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Booker T.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Washington refers to the network that black folks used to
stay informed as the grapevine telegraph, and he talks about
how powerful it was and how it could work so
fast that slaves knew the results of battles before white
people did. In a story he tells, Washington talks about
how a black man was sent to the post office
a few miles away from the plantation once or twice
(20:20):
a week.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
The man who was sent to the.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
Office would linger about the place long enough to get
the drift of the conversation from the group of white
people who naturally congregated there after receiving their mail to
discuss the latest news. The mail carrier, on his way
back to our master's house would as naturally retail the
news that he had secured among the slaves, and in
this way they often heard of important events before the
(20:45):
white people at the Big House, as the master's house
was called.
Speaker 3 (20:49):
It seems like a fool proof method of knowledge sharing.
I know there was some risk involved, but I'd acted eavesdrop.
It was a part of daily life. Yeah, black folks
had to find ways to educate them. White folks were
constantly trying to find ways to restrict and falsify information
to keep black people ignorant. But like if you can't
(21:09):
read or write and your enslavers aren't telling you anything,
what are your options?
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Okay, yes, let me tell you about John Quincy Adams.
And no, I'm not talking about the president. I'm talking
about a man who was enslaved in Virginia and escaped
slavery during the Civil War. He wrote about his life
in a book that was published in eighteen seventy two.
John couldn't read and write when he was young, but
when he heard white folks saying they didn't want black
(21:37):
people to learn to read and write, he figured it
must be worth learning. He would linger when he heard
someone reading, and when they asked him what he was doing,
he would say nothing. But of course he would relay
what he learned to his parents. And since eavesdropping was
a resistance tactic that everybody had the means to do,
(21:58):
his mom and dad told him, try to hear all
you can, but don't let them know it. So the
thing that I love about evesdropping is it feels like
a game of telephone, where one person learns a thing
and then it's able. Not telephone in the instance is
where the message gets changed, but just in the instance
in which you can pass information along from one person
(22:19):
into the next and to the next, and then it
becomes something that everybody knows, something.
Speaker 2 (22:23):
That everybody is aware of.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
And it can be for very small, menial things that
just make life a little bit better or make people
more informed, or it can be for these bigger things.
Speaker 2 (22:34):
It's about the Civil War.
Speaker 1 (22:35):
A lot of the instances that I could find of
eavesdropping is where people were talking about what news got
passed on of the Civil War. So obviously this act
of eavesdropping would be amplified in a time of such
heavy conflict that would impact everybody's lives in such a
big way. I think when we think about June teenth,
we think about how long it took for news to
(22:56):
get to Texas, And this is part of the conversation
that every body has when we talk about Juneteenth. But
that was one of a million, billion, trillion instances of
news getting to enslave people slowly that happened so many
times before then, and and things not related to the
Civil War or to emancipation, And it just feels like
(23:20):
there's a level of control and power that enslaved people
were able to take back in a way that that
was available to them. They were orally literate, so they
use what they could. They were like, I can't read
and I can't write, but I know the things that
I do have, and I know the power that I
do have, And they took that into their own hands.
They capitalized on that to be able to make their
lives better.
Speaker 3 (23:39):
Yeah, and I imagine on the flip side, since they
were so versed in eavesdropping, they made sure like if
an overseer was around, or even if like the white
little kids playing with the black little kids when they
were allowed to still play with each other, they knew like, okay,
how we be eas dropping on them. Let's make sure
we don't say nothing around them that they could use
against us.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Right right, And that's where the acts of covert communication
and language comes in. They were like, I'm gonna learn
from the fact that these people are saying too much
around me, like I know what I don't need to
be saying around them. And the irony in that is that, like,
you know, enslaved people could speak the same language as them,
but we were able to form our own languages at
the same time that they couldn't understand.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
After they took away their original languages, right.
Speaker 1 (24:23):
So I think that it just seems like such a
small act that compounded over time because so many different
people were doing it in purposes that even though it
wasn't something that like immediately emancipated them, or it wasn't
something that necessarily killed their enslavers, it wasn't those kinds
of acts. But there are places for all these kinds
(24:45):
of acts, for the indirect action, for the direct action
that was happening. Eavesdropping didn't exist in a vacuum. It
wasn't in its own container. There were other people who
were taking up arms, and there were other people who
were forming rebellions.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
There were people who were maroons. They were all different.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Kinds poisoning people exactly. And there were all these other
indirect tactics as well, like when the enslaved people would
pit enslavers against one another, kind of like you know
reality TV conflict of making people distrustful of other people,
are implanting false information with people to invite more conflict
(25:21):
into the situation. There were all kinds of smaller things
that happen on a day to day basis. Of course,
it was still a horrible situation. They were still enslaved,
but ameliorate some of the suffering that they were enduring.
Speaker 3 (25:35):
Now it is time for roll credits, the segment where
we give credit to a person, place, or think eves
who are what would you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
I would like to give credit to honeysuckle this week
because I have been seeing and smelling a lot of
honeysuckle around and there is some that is growing very
close to where I live, and I plan on going
and gathering some.
Speaker 2 (25:56):
And then making some tea with it.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
But I just have fond memories of honeysuckle because I
used to just eat it off the bush when I
was young, and we had some in our neighborhood, and
my sister and I would take some off the bush
and we would eat it, and there's nostalgia that's associated
with it.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
To me, what do you give credit to today?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
I would like to give credit to being influenced. I
feel like everyone be like I'm above the influence. I'm
impervious to advertisements and everything else. But I think it's
nice when you're like influenced to do something nice that
you really wasn't gonna do. I met this lady and
she had hit me up really out of the blue, like, oh,
I have some bugs, Like, can you take them from
my house? A older woman. So I went to her
(26:35):
house and I was just like, oh, I like your
plant and she's like thanks, and it was a big plant.
And when I was living, She's like, oh, here take this,
and it was like she's giving me this big plant
that like if you bought a food story, it'd be
like hundreds of dollars. And I was like, what's that's crazy?
But I was like, oh yeah, like I should do
that when people like show interest in plants, like I
have a lot of plants, like more than I need,
(26:56):
Like I should, you know, be more generous. So after
meeting up with her, I'll try to give people place
if they want them. A lot of people be like, girl,
I want that shit. But I was like, mister Rose,
you really influenced me to be nicer. So I would
like to give credit to you. It's Rose and to
be influenced to be better. That's nice And we'll see
(27:18):
y'all next week.
Speaker 2 (27:18):
Bye y'all.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio and Fairweather Friends Media.
This episode was written by Eves Jeffco and Katie Mitchell.
It was edited and produced by Tari Harrison. Follow us
on Instagram at on Theme Show. You can also send
us an email at hello at on Theme dot Show.
Head to on Theme Dot Show to check out the
(27:43):
show notes for episodes. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
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