Black Fraternal Societies 153A moniker oft en applied to African American cooking is
“soul food.”
Combined, all of these practices and rituals form a
uniquely black folk culture.
See also: Africanisms; Animal Trickster Stories; Blues
Music; Field Hollers; Goofer Dust; Grave Dirt; Hoodoo;
Jazz; Laveau, Marie; Ragtime; Ring Shout; Slave Culture;
Soul Food; Work SongsTed OlsonBibliography
Abrahams, Roger D. Singing the Master: Th e Emergence of African-
American Culture in the Plantation South. New York: Pan-
theon Books, 1992.
Crowley, Daniel J. African Folklore in the New World. Austin: Uni-
versity of Texas Press, 1977.
Herskovits, Melville. Th e Myth of the Negro Past. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1941.
Holloway, Joseph E., ed. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloom-
ington: Indiana University Press, 1991.
Hurston, Zora Neale. Mules and Men. New York: J. B. Lippincott,
1935.
Jarmon, Laura C. Wishbone: Reference and Interpretation in Black
Folk Narrative. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press,
2003.
Joyner, Charles W. Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave
Community. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
Levine, Lawrence W. Black Culture and Black Consciousness: Afro-
American Folk Th ought from Slavery to Freedom. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1977.
Puckett, Newbell Niles. Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro. New
York: Negro Universities Press, 1968 [1926].Black Fraternal Societies
In contemporary society, the term “fraternal societies”
conjures up images of university-based fraternities. Yet in
the 19th century, fraternal societies constituted the most
popular form of African American voluntary association.
Th ere were black fraternal societies as early as the 18th
century, and ritual and regalia helped distinguish them
from non-fraternal benevolent societies and social clubs.
Such associations continue to exist today, but the heyday
for the black lodge was in the late 19th and the early 20th
centuries.
Although fraternalism also appealed to whites in that
period, fraternal societies played a larger role in African
American life. Blacks were enthusiastic joiners, and manyBroadway productions. Soon, the cakewalk was being in-
corporated into the high-culture musical compositions of
Debussy, Sousa, and Stravinsky.
One example of African American material culture is
the banjo. Slaves brought from Africa a prototype version
of the banjo. By the 1840s, white audiences had been widely
exposed to the banjo through the use of that instrument
in minstrel shows, a new form of popular entertainment.
At minstrel shows, white musicians in blackface (min-
strels) imitated African American musicians by singing
ersatz African American folk songs. Far from traditional
(they were written commercially for the minstrel shows),
minstrel songs romanticized the lives of plantation slaves.
Anchoring their singing with banjo accompaniment and
also performing instrumental numbers on the banjo, white
minstrel performers borrowed the African American style
of down-stroking across the banjo strings and utilizing
the fi ft h (thumb) string of slave banjos.
African Americans have long constructed a variety
of material objects. From Africa, slaves brought skills—
especially ironworking, woodworking, and building with
earth and stone—which plantation owners exploited in
the New World; thus, plantation households were full of
tools, furniture, quilts, pottery, and jewelry made by slaves.
Similarly, plantation houses soon featured such African ar-
chitectural designs as central fi replaces, steeply sloping hip
roofs, wide porches with overhanging roofs, and the use of
moss and earth within walls.
Another important example of African American ma-
terial culture is the shotgun house. First built in New Or-
leans in the early 19th century by people of color (most
of whom were political refugees from Haiti), the shotgun
house combined African, Caribbean, and French architec-
tural concepts. Small and rectangular—one room wide by
three rooms deep, with doors at each end, and the gable
end toward the street—the shotgun house is a common
house design in the South today, utilized by whites as well
as blacks.
Over time, African Americans developed distinctive
foodways. Th is they accomplished by combining foodstuff s
introduced from Africa (such as yams, okra, black-eyed
peas, and sorghum), with Old World tastes and recipes
involving African techniques of cooking and spicing, with
New World foodstuff s and food preparation techniques.
Th is fusion of foodways led to the emergence of such dis-
tinctively African American dishes as gumbo and barbecue.