Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780252076831)

Charles Joyner takes readers on a journey back in time, up the Waccamaw River through the Lowcountry of South Carolina, past abandoned rice fields once made productive by the labor of enslaved Africans, past rice mills and forest clearings into the antebellum world of All Saints Parish. In this community, and many others like it, enslaved people created a new language, a new religion--indeed, a new culture--from African traditions and American circumstances.

Joyner recovers an entire lost society and way of life from the letters, diaries, and memoirs of the plantation whites and their guests, from quantitative analysis of census and probate records, and above all from the folklore and oral history of the enslaved Americans. His classic reconstruction of daily life in All Saints Parish is an inspiring testimony to the ingenuity and solidarity of a people.

This anniversary edition of Joyner's landmark study includes a new introduction in which the author recounts his process of writing the book, reflects on its critical and popular reception, and surveys the past three decades of scholarship on the history of enslaved people in the United States.

Author: Charles Joyner
ISBN-10: 0252076834
ISBN-13: 9780252076831
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Language: English
Published: 10/01/2009
Pages: 416
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.10h x 5.90w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 02/01/2010 pg. 76