240 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentcontent of the celebration as well. Th ree central compo-
nents of African American culture—songs, oration, and
dance—infused the fête. Orators and songstresses per-
formed in a variety of African languages, of which the white
audience would have had little to no knowledge. Such prac-
tices revealed not only the polyglot nature of the African-
descended population but also the insular messages of the
songs and speeches. Th e lyrics and words were meant to be
understood by those in the black community with cultural
memories of West Africa. In addition to the oral tradition,
the somatic or bodily performance in dance refl ected the
African provenance of the festival. Most noted by specta-
tors was the “Toto” or “Guinea dance” characterized by ges-
ticulations alien to the European and white colonial dance
forms. Criticized by whites as either “lewd” or “indecent,”
this dance unabashedly proclaimed the enslaved Africans’
desire to tap into their African roots. Th us, the dance it-
self was an act of resistance to white attempts to diff use and
negate African cultural retentions. Clothing, dance, song,
speech, material culture, food—all affi rmed the African-
derived nature of the Pinkster experience.
On the eve of the Albany Common Council’s decision
to ban the Pinkster festival in 1811, Africans continued
to celebrate the holiday according to their own dictates.
Although the festivities themselves became increasingly
commercialized and child-oriented (in terms of audience),
the content of the performances changed little. Although
white children and their parents may have interpreted the
African king as an Uncle Remus fi gure (the wise storyteller)
for their own amusement, the African American popula-
tion revered him as an important fi gure in their commu-
nity. Th e secularization of Pinkster, though perhaps viewed
as blasphemous or at best a championing of a world turned
upside down, allowed blacks to create their own cultural
space and tradition in New York. It was this exercising of
black autonomy that alarmed the council most, despite
white protestations that the festival promoted immoral-
ity, which led to the dismantling of Pinkster celebrations
in the city. As in Albany, by the 1820s, Pinkster had disap-
peared from the African American cultural landscape in
the North. Th is celebration was supplanted by abolition
parades and General Training Day (the parade of black
Revolutionary War veterans).
Scholars continue to debate to what extent African cul-
tural patterns infl uenced the formation of African Ameri-
can culture. Analyses of Pinkster are not exempt from theAn 1803 description of the Pinkster festival celebrated
in Albany, New York, proves instructive in revealing the
African transformation of a Dutch holiday into a distinctly
African American cultural product. According to contem-
poraneous reports, African Americans patrolled the streets
of Albany the week before Pinkster, during which time
residents could hear the beating of drums. Th is activity
coupled with the encampment of Pinkster Hill by enslaved
Africans signaled the advent of Pinkster. On the actual day
of the festival, the Monday aft er Pinkster, residents (both
black and white) of the city and the surrounding country-
side gathered at the hill to witness and participate in the
festival. Th e white audience amounted to spectators who
came to watch the “Negroes” frolic. However, the black on-
lookers were more oft en than not active participants in the
festivities.
Th e Africans altered the hill, a site where public hang-
ings took place, by constructing arbors of bushes and
branches and adorned with azaleas (also known as the
Pinkster Blummachee) in the form of an amphitheatre. Th e
use of bushes to construct these coverings harkened back
to West African cultural practices. In the arbors revelers
could fi nd a variety of foodstuff s and spirits. Th e celebra-
tion included sports, games, and dancing. Th e African king,
referred to as the “captain-general and commander in chief
of the pinkster boys,” presided over the events. As a rule, the
king had to be African-born, and he usually traced his lineage
back to one of the ethnic groups on the so-called Guinea
Coast—the west coastal region of Africa from present-day
Sierra Leone to Benin. Th e most famous king was King
Charles (aka King Charley or Carolus Africanus Rex).
King Charles, like his African subjects, dressed in a
manner that set him apart from the white revelers. Th e king
wore a fl amboyant outfi t: a British brigadier’s red jacket of
ankle-length, trimmed with gold lace; yellow buckskins;
blue stockings; and black shoes with gleaming silver buck-
les. A hat, also trimmed with gold lace, complemented the
ensemble. Th e African participants wore vibrantly colored
cloths emblematic of their African heritages. Although King
Charles wore European-style clothing in mockery of the
defeated British, his identity as an African was unques-
tionable to the active and passive participants. Similarly,
the clothing of the African-descended population be-
spoke their connection to the land of their ancestors.
It was not simply the raiment of the Africans that re-
fl ected the transformation of the Dutch holiday, but the