Plantation tutorship systems inadvertently sustained African cultural communities

Evidence

Within each of these groups there was cultural and linguistic diversity, but African languages and customs were undoubtedly kept alive. Some planters placed new arrivals under the tutelage of a slave on the plantation who came from the same homeland to facilitate their integration into plantation life. In the process they also facilitated the maintenance of African communities in their midst. The enslaved recalled, and sometimes called upon, their homelands. In one Vodou song recorded in the 1950s, probably a relic from the days of slavery, a singer calls on the King of the Kongo to “look at what they are doing to me.” — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 153

Categorization

• QUESTION: Did this maintained Kongo identity and homeland-recalling furnish the cultural substrate for later revolt leadership and Vodou networks?
• SHARE: For someone deep into diaspora religion, the 1950s Vodou song relic invoking the King of the Kongo is the kind of bridging detail they would savor.