Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic

Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic

The Dwelling Place: Why you think Clarke chose this image? What does the use of the Psalm (not just the image; its entirety) suggest about how whites lived life and viewed mastery on the dwelling place? About black life and slavery on the dwelling place? Why, in short, could both whites and slaves find meaning in the psalm? What does using it say about Clarke's understanding of the "true" way to depict relationships between white masters and black slaves?

Christianity has always had a paradoxical role in the history of the South. On one hand, it was a religion imposed upon slaves by slave owners. It was often used by whites as propaganda: it was assumed its ideology was useful to make slaves content with their lots in life, as it stressed meekness and acceptance of one's fate. Psalm 90 reads: "Who regards the power of your wrath? who rightly fears your indignation? So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts to wisdom. (11-12). Yet the title of the Psalm is: "A prayer of Moses, the man of God." Moses was the Bible's great anti-slavery advocate. Moses helped set his people free after years of turmoil and strife. Moses' actions were always orchestrated by God, thus to end slavery was to be God's instrument. On one hand, the words of the Bible could preach resignation: "Satisfy us by your loving-kindness in the morning; / so shall we rejoice and be glad all the days of our life" (14). This could be a call to rejoice and be glad, regardless of one's status, for all the days of one's life. But the Bible could also preach the righteousness of the death of Pharaoh and his overseers.

The contradictions of Christianity in the antebellum South is exhibited in the themes of Erskine Clarke' book Dwelling Place: A Plantation Epic. The dwelling place is the earthly abode of all human beings, yet it is also a place of suffering and oppression for slaves, a place they cannot own and are forced to dwell in, under the control of their owners. This phrase defining the system of slavery is taken from first words of Psalm 90: "Lord, you have been our dwelling place from one generation to another" (1). The words suggest that it is not on the land, but in a state of grace where people spiritually 'dwell.' Land is unimportant, and earthly existence is unimportant. To live 'in the Lord' is what is important. This idea could be used to defend the supremacy of slave-owners, given that judgment was to come after death, and one's earthly status was unimportant. But it also was an empowering idea for slaves, as it suggested that rather than land, spiritual sanctification was the only true status in the eyes of God. Ownership of land is meaningless, as the land, like human flesh was dust: "You turn us back to the dust and say, Go back, O child of earth." (3). Ownership of the land thus meant little to God, despite the ways that white Southerners used it to defend their superiority, literacy, and right to preach the gospel.

Furthermore, the idea that Southern honor and the Southern way of life was permanent and ineradicable is mocked by the power of the Almighty and his ability to smite all those who displease him: "For a thousand years in your sight are like yesterday when it is past and like a watch in the night. You sweep us away like a dream; we fade away suddenly like the grass" (4-5). Whites found comfort in God's sense of wrath, because they believed that God would protect them against potential slave insurrections, and act like a watch in the night, while slaves found comfort and protection in the night from God when they fled -- like the real Moses herself, Harriet Tubman. The mightiness and eternity of God dwarfed the created status of the slave-owner.

Status could be easily overturned, the Psalm warns, giving hope to slaves. Although whites might enjoy prosperity in the dwelling place of the plantation this was temporary: "In the morning it is green and flourishes; in the evening it is dried up and withered" (6). Those who show respect for God and who are truly pious will flourish in the long run, not simply Southerners who are cruel to their slaves and pray on Sundays, for God sees all "secret sins." While Southerners used religion to cause slaves to fear lying, cheating, stealing, and running away on the grounds this was immoral, slaves could see through such pretence, especially given the Psalm's celebration of those who work hard in labor and sorrow, and end their years "like a sigh" (9). Slaves knew it was their labor that was respected by the divine.