Enslavers censored the Bible’s Exodus story to suppress liberation narratives

Evidence

When enslaved Africans arrived in the American colonies, they brought with them traditions of percussive rhythm that could be made on a drum as easily as with the body. The Christianity that defined colonial life had alternative musical priorities, melody being the most substantial. But, gradually, the dislocated, reluctantly acculturated Africans made modifications. One of these became known as the ring shout, wherein people would dance and chant in a circle. Rhythm merged with harmony, culminating in survival songs chiefly inspired by the Bible’s most salient tales. When enslavers made the Bible available, they often removed all of Exodus, with its stories of divine justice, of the Lord delivering Israel from bondage. The enslaved people who were familiar with those stories, firsthand or otherwise, built them into sermons and incorporated them into songs, songs intoned in small prayer houses and formal churches. They sang while they worked, achieving conversance in a book many of them were never allowed to become literate enough to read, a book whose allegories some enslavers deemed too resonant for the fertile imaginations of the enslaved. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 1093

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing interest in how subaltern groups repurpose dominant texts and institutions — echoes the framing of enslaved Christianity as both imposed and re-signified. — connects to: The Homeric epics deliberately censored human sacrifice from their narratives.
• QUESTION: How widespread was the removal of Exodus from Bibles given to the enslaved, and is this documented in primary sources beyond this account?
• SEED: Angle: biblical censorship as contested infrastructure — who controls sacred text and what happens when a liberation story is literally excised.