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