Masters and slaves

While reading one of my sources from my thesis Masters and slaves: In the house of the lord which was edited by JohnB. Boles, There is a chapter starting at pg 99 called Planters and slave religion in the deep south. So far i have found it very informative as it includes, the way that slaves took christianity and religion as a major part of their culture, it talks about the split of the northern and southern churches over freeing slaves, and  it talked about how slavery was used to help develop the relationship between masters and their slaves. It gave slaves a morality system, to obey their masters and be good slaves, which worked much better than just physically punishing the slaves. Their was some argument within the south over whether religion would make slaves more obedient or if it would encourage them to rebel. The chapter continues by talking about how Christianity was used to justify slavery,  Slavery in the south became a christian institution. For my futre blog posts I hope to review more of this book and some of my other sources.

source: Boles, J. B.(ED.)(1988).Masters & Slaves: In the House of the lord. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky.

Research topics that I could base my thesis on.

Fredrick Douglass's experience with religion  and how it may affect how he wrote this piece.

Prejudice in the churches during the 19th century.

White slave owners use of religion to make up for their maltreatment of slaves.

Idea of heaven and how slaves and slave owners felt about it. White people seem to believe that slaves will not go to heaven during this time period, and do not want slaves in heaven.

Prejudice that white men must do the thinking while slaves must do the field work. I could research how in which white slave owners would justify the idea that they had it harder of than slaves, do to all of the thinking they had to do.

I think over time these subjects could be used in some combination to create my thesis statement for my essay.

Analyzing The Church and Prejudice by Frederick Douglass

Throughout The Church and Prejudice by Frederick Douglass, Frederick shows how the white people of the 19th century were prejudiced against the black people of America. He also spoke on how religion effected their prejudice. One Idea that Frederick Douglass brought up that I found interesting was the idea that white people discriminate against the slaves and black people around them for not knowing much, and yet the reason they do not know anything is because white people did not allow black people to have schools, or a proper education. Frederick Douglass also brought up the idea of how, the southern Preachers taught that white people were the thinkers of the societies, while the black people were the workers. The Preachers taught  it that the slaves were to be thought as lucky to just have to do the work, and not have to deal with all of the thinking that white people had to do.

Frederick Douglass also spoke on the idea that white people like black people as long as they stay within their place.  The place that was forced on the black people by white people.

Frederick Douglass talks about in his essay how these people allowed black people into their religious groups but often were still prejudiced against them within the group, as well as making the slaves stay within their place and only be workers, the White men also did not want to go to heaven if black people went to heaven.

This idea was especially surprising to me. If you allowed black people into the Methodist church but expected them not to got to heaven. White people allowed black people to celebrate god, but in the end expected god to not reward the black people the way  god would reward his/her white followers.

Frederick Douglass throughout his piece showed how their was a lot of prejudice from white people towards black people during the nineteenth century, and a lot of it was supported by religion or at least religious leaders.

Website to reference for a copy of The church and prejudice by Frederick douglass

http://www.greatamericandocuments.com/speeches/douglass-church-prejudice.html


This website has a copy of The church and prejudice by Frederick Douglass, Throughout my research I will be looking back on this copy to compare to my different research materials.

here is a citation just incase for this website.




Peacok Data, Inc, " Frederick Douglass: The Church and Prejudice," Great American Documents. Accessed October 3, 2011.    http://www.greatamericandocuments.com/speaches/douglass-chruch-prejudice.html.

update on Research

Today I began looking in the library for different sources to base my research off of, I found a few sources on different authors reaction to Fredrick Douglass's stance on Religion in connection to slaves while others authors speak on how race and religion interacted during slavery throughout the 18th and 19th century. So far i've found some Online Journal articles and a few books. I haven't found any sources that directly refer or critique The Church and Prejudice by Frederick Douglass but I hope to find them as my research continues.