Enslavement

Daily Life 

For any enslaved individuals, free time was limited. Labor consumed most of the day, whether it was enslaved labor or domestic labor around the household. Food-wise, enslaved individuals had less access to varied ingredients. Around Davidson, many meals included fat pork and/or cornmeal. Some individuals had garden plots to supplement their diets, if it was permitted by their enslavers (Blodgett & Levering 2012, 27).

The 1850 census lists 114 enslaved individuals in the town of Davidson. Since enslaved men often had trades, many could have also worked in town as blacksmiths, carpenters, shoemakers, or cabinetmakers (Blodgett & Levering 2012, 12).

Before the formation of patrols in 1855, enslaved individuals were able to gather on campus during some evenings, perhaps sharing meals together. This would have been especially common on Sundays, as enslaved individuals would often have the afternoons off to attend the Sabbath School (see Religious Life section).

For additional information on what life was like for enslaved people, see the Resources page.

Social Restrictions

By 1850, black North Carolinians, whether enslaved or free, faced a variety of restrictions and curfews. These could affect the ability to leave plantations, purchase alcohol, and attend church (Mellin 2020, 59; Morrill 2011, 31). Letters from Davidson College students Thomas Hamilton and Pinckney Chambers respectively demonstrate other policed behaviors:

Our College still continues in flourishing state there were 83 students last session near 20 more than has ever been before. There were 7 suspended for misconduct during the session one near the commence for striking a fellow student over the head with a stick for little provocation which came near killing him. The others were all suspended at once and for the same offence, it is almost too abominable to relate. It was keeping company with negro women, the [sic] would go out several of them together after night to meet with the negroes.

Their names are as follows, Lewis Beard, son of John Beard Esq. Joseph Graham son of John D. Graham of Beaties Ford & another by the name of Graham from beyond Lincolnton, Joseph Scott from Roky River son of William Scott, John Long of Cheraw son of the commissioned merchant there & a young [sic] by the name of Lata from below Cheraw.

...rooms for the students as soon as they can but I expect they will not commence building them before spring. There are about 55 students and they are still coming in every week or two. I understood a week or two back that some of the students at Davidson had taken a general feast with Lemley’s Negroes and the faculty somehow or other got to hear of it and had them up and talked to them about it and in a day or two afterwards they put off. I did not hear who they were or whether they had come back or not. I hope it is all false, for I know that a great many false tails (sic) got out when we were there and perhaps this one is falts (sic). The boys here is generaly (sic) very good, there has not been any devilment going on among them worth relating except on last Saturday night some of the students went to the female academy and took down the window curtains and made flags for them and stuck them upon the well posts in the streets and also took a carryall that was in the street and carryed (sic) it to the academy and turned it over at the gate, that is about the amount. We have to societies the names of which, is Adelphian and Hermien. The Adelphians are the strongest both in number and has in it generaly (sic) the smartest young men in the Institution. (You might know that I am among that number). I forgot to tell you that I am boarding with a man by the name of Thomas Sparrow but is not any kin to that old fellow at Davidson namely...

These letters from Davidson students demonstrate the strict social taboo attached to any sort of interracial interactions. While white college students experienced minor punishment for such mingling, the consequences black participants faced would likely have been much more severe.

Emancipation

For enslaved Davidsonians, freedom came slowly and gradually. Despite the Emancipation Proclamation being issued in January 1863, no enslaved individuals were freed that year. In fact, Davidson came to host more enslaved individuals during this period as more Southern enslavers took refuge from war-torn areas (Blodgett & Levering 2012, 35-36). Post-emancipation, enslaved labor was replaced by the sharecropping system, in which black workers continued to labor on the farms of white landowners (Blodgett et al. 2018, 40). Black Davidsonians continued to face social and economic restrictions, and whipping posts remained in use (Mellin 2020, 69; Tompkins 1903, 119). 

Upon achieving freedom, many black Davidsonians remained in the area due to economic constraints. Most of the formerly enslaved individuals in and around Davidson took their surnames from their former enslavers; many black individuals can trace their family trees back to the plantation where their relatives once labored. Some of the common surnames associated with local 19th century plantations include the Reeds of Mount Mourne Plantation, the Stinsons of Woodlawn Plantation, the Houstons of Greene Plantation, and the Alexanders of Alexandriana Plantation (Blodgett et al. 2018, 57).

The vast majority of Reconstruction-era sources gloss over the experience of newly-freed black Davidsonians, focusing instead on white desperation in the face of a crumbling economic system, as they could no longer rely on enslaved labor (Mellin 2020, 69).

The following account appears in former college president John Lycan Kirkpatrick’s April 1866 letter: 

I can hardly give you an idea of the condition of things in our country. We are yet under military rule, which although we have not suffered directly from it . . . The Negroes are doing better than might have been expected. For a while they were perfectly crazy with the idea of being free. They are now much sobered down, and for the most part (at least in the part of the country) have gone to work to make a living. But they look miserable, many of them suffering for food and other comforts—some are trying to live by stealing, in which they are assisted by unprincipled white men, and in some places many have perished and more will perish for the want of the care which their masters once bestowed upon them, and which the Negro knows nothing of bestowing upon himself for his family. The Whites are so reduced that they cannot help the Negro, where they would desire to do so. It is as much as they can do to feed their own families; for last year the crops fell short through want of labour to work and gather them.

Trustee minutes from the period show similar sentiments:

The general causes for the small number of students are doubtless these: 1, the scarcity of money throughout the country. 2, the necessity arising from the liberation of the slaves, for many of those who would otherwise be at College, to devote themselves, for the present at least, to the employments of the farm. 3, the withdrawment of so many from their preparatory studies into the military service. 4, as applying to our Preparatory Department and to some extent to the College also, the unprecedented number of classical schools which have sprung up in every part of the country. An additional cause may be mentioned, inasmuch as it has come within our knowledge, that it has operated to some extent in preventing students from coming to the Institution, namely, the small number of Professors as compared with other Institutions.

Communication from Prof. Martin referred to in Report of Faculty

To the Board of Trustees of Davidson College.

Gentlemen:-

I beg leave respectfully to urge upon your attention several objects which seem to me to demand it, and for which I earnestly ask an appropriation.

(1) In common with my neighbors, I find it difficult to keep myself provided with servants, and it has often been, during the past year, cause of serious inconvenience that the water for family use had to be brot from a neighbor lot. We have been compelled to use water with an economy that is neither healthful nor pleasant. I beg that a well may be dug on the lot during the present summer.

Bibliography

Blodgett, Jan, and Ralph B. Levering. One Town, Many Voices: A History of Davidson, North Carolina. Davidson, NC: Davidson Historical Society, 2012. 

Blodgett, Jan, Kapil Vasudev, and Loretta Wertheimer. Shared Stories: African Americans in North Mecklenburg. Davidson, NC: Davidson College, 2018.

Mellin, Sarah H.D. “Beneath the Bricks: Reckoning with Legacies of Colonialism, Slavery, and White Supremacy at Davidson College,” 2020.

Tompkins, Daniel A. History of Mecklenburg County and the City of Charlotte: From 1740 to 1903. Charlotte, NC: Observer Print House, 1903.