Jubilee

Families on slave plantations were complex, spontaneous, and dysfunctional. White slave masters, such as Vyry’s owner and father, Marse John, frequently fathered children with their female slaves. However, the law determined that a mixed-race child’s condition was determined by its mother, thereby making Vyry her own father’s property, unacknowledged both by him and her siblings, John Jr. and, in adulthood, Lillian. In childhood, however, Vyry and Lillian are playmates, and the latter openly acknowledges Vyry as kin. Only when she becomes a young woman, thereby bound to notions of Southern propriety, does her mother correct her association. Lillian and Vyry, however, resume something of a sibling relationship in adulthood after Lillian goes mad in the aftermath of a rape. Vyry’s concern and protectiveness over her sister—the only member of the Dutton family whom she worries about—reveals that the South’s strict racial hierarchy and denial of these bonds did not always erase them in the minds of those who were aware of their relations.

In instances in which blood relations were denied, slaves created family. They give each other titles, such as “Brother,” “Sis,” and “Aunt” to demonstrate their connection through a common condition. After Vyry’s mother, Sis Hetta, died in yet another childbirth, Vyry first has Mammy Sukey, then Aunt Sally, as maternal figures. From Aunt Sally, Vyry learns how to be a superb cook. She also learns resilience by adapting Sally’s habit of singing through hard times.

These familial relationships, whether genuine or ersatz, cannot be forced. For instance, Marse John could not convince Jake to be a father to Vyry. Aunt Sally later tells Vyry that she was moved out of the house so that Jake wouldn’t kill her. Jake’s aversion to Vyry is due to his awareness that she is the daughter of his “wife” and lover, Hetta—a living representation of Jake’s powerlessness both to protect Hetta from rape and to maintain the sanctity of his intimate relationship.

One of the things that is most remarkable about African American culture is how enslaved black people were able to find joy and purpose amid incessant suffering and seeming hopelessness. Aunt Sally sings as a means of helping her to get through yet another day of drudgery, while songs also become a covert method for her to protest what she witnesses on the plantation, such as Grimes’ savage beating of the old man, Tom. Vyry takes up this tradition, long after the Duttons sell Sally and remove her from the plantation. Vyry is deprived of yet another loving maternal figure but learns from Sally, not only how to cook exquisitely, but also how to assuage her pain through songs that later became known as spirituals—that is American songs derived from black people’s experience of slavery in the South. Some of the songs were variations on hymns, such as “There’s a star in the East on Christmas morn,” re-appropriated to speak directly to enslaved people’s hopes for salvation.

Similarly, Brother Ezekiel preaches to the slaves about the coming of a Moses who will rescue them from slavery. As the only literate slave on the plantation, Brother Zeke embodies the danger that slave masters fear—awareness of his condition, particularly as a result of being able to read and interpret the Bible for himself, while other slaves rely on masters and pro-slavery ministers to tell them what the text means. As with Aunt Sally’s reliance on song, Brother Zeke maintains hope that slavery will end and that better days will come through his understanding and interpretation of the Bible. Songs and stories both give slaves a much needed creative outlet and a sense of culture that is uniquely their own.