During the Antebellum period, enslaves black longed for ways to express themselves. Because reading and writing was prohibited, slaves adopted a strong oral form of expression. Storytelling, church, singing, and music were important forms of cultural expression that slaves created as traditions to escape the harsh conditions. These traditions became a primary mean of preserving slave history and cultural information. Storytelling, folktales, and music provided knowledge as literature was not acknowledged yet. Singing and worshiping was a way blacks could voice their grievances and channel their hardships within the slave community. Slave songs known as spirituals were early adaptations of hymns that slaves were taught during Sunday worship. Worshipping at church greatly became one of the few ways slaves were able to freely express themselves. Despite having to live with this dehumanizing practice, blacks still worshipped God and became Christian. On most plantations, Sundays were considered a rest day; therefore, as Christianity exceeded, slaves were allowed to worship, study Bible verses, and learn more about their religion. Their reality began to seep into narrative and their tales of freedom and salvation forged together to create new spiritual songs. These new hymns were able to teach and inform the younger generation of how to escape this tragedy. Even though there are a variety of interpretations of these spiritual tunes, people believed that slaves used them as instruction to runaway to the North. The famous song, Wade in the Water by Ella Jenkins, was believed to be used to transmit secret codes to help slaves escape. Eventually, spirituals gained its recognition as some of the first forms of music to inf
luence the 20th and 2st century.
However, during the 9th century, African American literature gained its fame as the more predominant form of expression. According to pbs.org, literacy brought with it knowledge, inspiration, and sometimes the means to escape from slavery. Writers were able to illuminate their concerns and ideas on religion, oppression, segregation, and freedom. Through slave narratives (autobiographies), short stories, poems, novels, and speeches, free and enslaved blacks were able to have a voice and eventually aid in the abolishment of slavery. Famous writers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Paul Laurence Dunbar are a few out of many composers who earned their recognition for creating honest and engaging works during the antebellum period. Frederick Douglass is predominantly known for his slave narratives and for emerging from slavery to become one of the great Americans of the 9th century. In a journal article, I Was Born: Slave Narratives, Their Status as Autobiography and as Literature by James Olney, he is praised to being the most famous African American slave narrator who went beyond the single intention of describing slavery, but he also describes it more exactly and more convincingly than anyone else. Harriet Jacobs was actively involved in the abolition movement where she supported fugitive slaves. Her book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, was well recognized and played a crucial role in the fight against slavery. Paul Laurence Dunbar is credited to being the first African American poet to enhance the black experience to a broad audience. Black literature essentially became indirectly and directly intertwined with the legacy of the abolishment of American slavery.