Clothing And Food

            Clothing and food that people wear and eat can determine a lot of things about a person. For example; style, culture, likes, dislike, etc. During the 1800s clothing helps some people determine where a slave is from (town slave or rural slave). Rural slaves wore a boorish cloth which was called “negro cloth” or “negro brogans” and these clothing’s were mended and re-mended. Town slaves had better clothes and even another traditional set for Sundays. City slaves dressed in broadcloth suits, blue coats, bright buttons, and gold chains. For a slave to be well-dressed and have good posture it meant that his master had good taste.

            Like with clothing the town’s slaves got fed more elegantly then people in the rural areas. This was because many slaves ate from there masters kitchen. Mostly any slave who ate in the town was fed better than the slaves that were servants in a country house and even better than slaves that worked in the field. Slaves that worked for larger corporate owners were fed by them because they bought large volumes of food. With the law making corporate owners give workers basic food, meat, bread, rice, vegetables, there were more slaves working. This food order also showed many people why plantation slaves were less healthy than other kind of slaves.

Resources:

Information: http://www.tngenweb.org/campbell/hist-bogan/antebellumSlavery.html (History of Campbell County Tennessee: Antebellum Slavery)

Picture 1: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOWPKWLh6cXKs_15GXd81drgX0nn8EZ0r4VptpKobZzESWtbrozq7EbcyAQQUpC_Lsgy4JedzEvpUORF_LHjbDToCmaadH-buZZorMOi7wmwPmZR3DoNZPtKg2rYaaPWrNr-sOHr85YQ/s400/slaves4.jpg (in this picture you see the female slaves clothing look a little worst than male slaves)

Picture 2: http://www.sonofthesouth.net/slavery/photographs/slaves.jpg (in this picture you see that most of the kids do not have shoes and that there clothes are not clean)