Amid hard work and harsh treatment, slaves created social bonds and a rich culture of their own. Thus blacks in America continued to employ African names, like Cuffee and Binah, generations after their enslavement. Even if masters gave them English names, they might use African names in the slave quarters to sustain family and community networks and memories. Some also retained elements of West African languages. Along the South Carolina and Georgia coast, enslaved workers spoke Gullah, a dialect that combined African words and speech patterns with English. Agricultural techniques, medical practices, forms of dress, folktales, songs and musical instruments, dances, and courtship rituals—all demonstrated the continued importance of West African and Caribbean culture to African Americans. This syncretic culture, which combined elements from Africa and the Caribbean with those from the United States, was disseminated as slaves hauled cotton to market, forged families across plantation boundaries, or were sold farther south. It was also handed down across generations through storytelling, music, rituals, and religious services.
Religious practices offer an important example of syncretic cultural forms. Africans from Muslim communities often continued to pray to Allah even if they were also required to attend Protestant churches. Black preachers who embraced Christianity developed rituals that combined African and American elements. In the early nineteenth century, slaves eagerly embraced the evangelical teachings offered by Baptist and Methodist preachers, which echoed some of the expressive spiritual forms in West Africa. By midcentury, African Americans made up one-third of Baptist and perhaps one-quarter of Methodist church membership. On Sunday mornings, slaves might listen to white ministers proclaim that slavery was God’s will; that evening, they might gather in the woods to hear their own preachers tell of God’s love and the possibilities of black liberation, at least in the hereafter. Slaves often incorporated drums, conch shells, dancing, or other West African elements into these worship services.
Although most black preachers were men, a few women gained a spiritual following in slave communities. Many female slaves embraced religion enthusiastically, hoping that Christian baptism might substitute for West African rituals that protected newborn babies. Enslaved women also called on church authorities to intervene when white owners or overseers or even enslaved men abused them. They also considered the church one means of sanctifying slave marriages that were not recognized legally.
Slaves also generally provided health care for their community. Most slave births were attended by black midwives, and African American healers often turned to herbal medicines, having discovered southern equivalents to cures used in West Africa. Forced to labor in the fields, gather branches and roots in the forest, and supplement their meager rations with local plants, slaves were far more attuned to the natural world than were their owners.