Well thank you for the introduction it’s it’s an honor and to be here at Princeton Theological Seminary and and this story I prepared for you today and the story entitled and Pinkster king and the king of Congo it’s a story based on the book I recently published and it’s a story that
I start with a person you all know Sojourner Truth Sojourner Truth you all know her as an icon of black liberation movement but also as an icon of evangelicalism and but but perhaps many of you do not know is that Sojourner truths native language was that and it
Shouldn’t be a surprise to you if you know where she grew up Sojourner Truth and grew up in the Hudson Valley near Albany and she grew up at a time when in that part of the state of New York still many descendants of the 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland lift as
You all know New York has a Dutch history once upon a time used to be New Amsterdam and when the English took over and the original population decided to remain they remained but Manhattan itself which used to be the center of Dutch power became increasingly English
And as a result and Dutch families would leave Manhattan and move towards the Hudson Valley and for several generations in and around the city of Albany you would still have many places where essentially Dutch 17th century culture survived also in terms of language you had slaves who grew up with
Those families for several generations and slaves such as as a journey through which speak Dutch as their native language and we estimated still by the mid 18th century about 15% of all the slaves living in the states of New York and New Jersey spoke Dutch that’s something that very few people
Are actually aware of um now why do I start with the general truth um because I start with her she has a very interesting passage in her famous narrative that passage relates to a moment in her life briefly after she walks away from her former slave master essentially what had happened is the
Following she was a slave everybody knew that slavery was about to come to an end and it was very common at that time that masters and slaves would make a deal and the deal essentially was you will work hard for me for a number of years they
Would set that number and after that year the last year is over I will give you freedom so the deal was made with Sojourner Truth and her master she would work for five more years and then she would become free what happens is that during those five years she gets injured
And she can’t work as hard anymore and after the fifth year passed her master says no but because of your injury you didn’t work really hard you have to remain asleep longer than I told you five years ago she disagrees and she walks away and she walks away from him
And then she lives with a Dutch American family the phone wagon her family but at one moment and she makes a very interesting observation and in her narrative what she does is she starts to become nostalgic nostalgic about the old days when she was still living with the
Other slaves and the reason why she becomes nostalgic is the upcoming Pinkster celebration and I will show you the passage and I asked my colleague Catherine she would be so nice to read some of the quotes that I present to you today country Yeah and that’s quite a remarkable a remarkable passage and it shows to us also the importance of this annual Pinkster celebration to the slave community living here in New Jersey and in the state of New York what makes it interesting is there was a celebration that only occurred among the Dutch owned
Slaves and that’s also the reason I think while we have so little information about that celebration and the Dutch themselves do not write about it there’s no Dutch newspapers at that time English newspapers have little interest because they don’t really understand what’s going on and so the
Few trade the few sources we have about this Pinkster celebration come from outsiders outsiders such as Alexander Coventry from Scotland who travels through this part of the country he observes the festival and he makes a reference to it and Catherine if you could read yeah so the importance here
Is to realize for us that this is not just a Dutch celebration it’s a bi-racial celebration that included also the slave and community we have a much longer and much more interesting reference to it from an unidentified source from the Year 1803 that explains to us how Pinkster was celebrated in the
City of Albany which really used to be connected the last bulwark of Dutch identity in America and it reveals to us that by that time it had become almost an exclusively african-american celebration and it was huge it attracted up to a thousand visitors it was the largest african-american celebration in
Northern America at that time it was organized by the slave community itself and he highlights two things he highlights that the african-american community would have a procession during that celebration and the procession they organized was in honor of their King so let me show you let me show you the quote
Yeah so quiet quite astonishing right well what is this all about this Pinkster and celebration we have some more information about it we have quite an interesting poem dedicated and to this Pinkster King and we also know that in the year 18 11 the city authorities in Albany prohibit and the celebration
We do know that celebration and survives for a couple of decades in the surrounding area but eventually it disappears around 1850 and surprisingly it disappears without any signs of major resistance and by the african-american community all we have after that is a couple of memories people recalling that
In the old days there was this Pinkster celebration and i will have two quotes and about this and and what is interesting about these two quotes is that they both make a connection between the african-american Pinkster celebration and central Africa and I will get back to that later in my presentation country
Yeah so I’m gonna and Kongo yeah I know I’ll get back to those places in a minute just one last reference to memories and the most famous passage about the Pinkster celebration can be found in work of the famous author Cooper his novel Satan’s – what is going
On here um I’m not really not the first person who writes about this tradition others have written about it perhaps most famously a historian called Shane white and who essentially perceives and interprets the tradition as a type of carnival tradition that mixed some Dutch and an indigenous African elements
And he then compares it to carnival and explains it as a type of reversal of social order whereby those who are kings those who are slaves for one day become the king and then after the celebration is over everything goes back to normal just summarizing his theory yeah so that’s that’s his interpretation
And and I’m very skeptical about his interpretation and we’ll try to explain to you later where that skepticism comes from but let us first have a look then at the Dutch elements Empress Pinkster indeed is is a Dutch word it’s a Dutch word and it means Pentecost it means Pentecost and Whitsuntide
Usually when I give these presentations I have to explain what with sign type is but I don’t think that I need to do this here at this institution but maybe I do need to do is to explain to you that many of the Pentecost radishes in in the
Dutch Republic have very old roots and because they built on pre-christian sellable celebrations celebrations that related to and the arrival of the summer and therefore not surprisingly many of these celebrations will have allusions to fertility symbols most famously what you would see happening during the Pinkster celebration was that in in
Villages people would select the prettiest young girl of the village and that young girl would then be decorated with flowers and she would be paraded through town and that looked more or less like this and they and she would be called Pinkster blue media so the Pinkster flower yeah and then
Christianity arrives and and and missionaries the first missionaries arriving in that part of Europe and feel how important these celebrations are to the population and they decide not to not to destroy it in the tradition but to reinterpret it yeah so what used to be essentially a pagan tradition now is
Perceived as a tradition in honor of the Virgin Mary that’s why you have the flowers and then it becomes delay the girl right a celebration of the Virgin Mary and also important is that many Dutch churches at that time are established on the day of Pentecost
And the cost as you know is essentially the history of the beginning of the Christian Church right so it’s not by accident that churches are established on the day of Pentecost and typical for that time is that you have a type of celebration coinciding with the inauguration of the
Church and that celebration the name of that celebration some of you might be familiar with is the word khakis it’s an originally Dutch term care community church mace meaning a church service but to many people nowadays Kirkman’s is essentially a synonym for a celebration fair popular feast where you
Then would have those those pagan traditions being mixed with certain Christian elements which becomes a problem once the Reformation arrives the Reformation arrives and the Reformation is of course not happy about the recycling of pagan elements so you see a strong resistance from within the Reformation against these Pinkster
Celebrations an attempt even to prohibit and destroy and the celebrations and because they perceive it as a typically Catholic thing right that’s that instead of of enlightening people and teaching them no longer to honor these pagan traditions what do Catholics do they just continue it and they put like like
A Christian sauce over it and say no it’s in so they tried to prohibit at the celebration but they fail they fail and the result is that what you see in the Dutch Republic is that Pentecost becomes essentially a time when the community is divided it’s divided within dos who
Follow the Dutch Reformed Church in its rejection and you have others who do not and among those others is of course those who are main Catholic because we shouldn’t forget that that in the 17th century Netherlands about a third of the population did not become Protestant they remained Catholic but you also have
Many members of the Dutch Reformed Church who perceive themselves as what the Dutch call leaf hovers and leaf harbors means essentially sympathizers it means that you’re linked to the church but you have you have some leeway yeah and that leeway allows you to still engage in certain popular celebrations
In any case what is important to us is that the community becomes divided right some still celebrate Pentecost and others are strongly against it and we do know also that the celebration is brought by the Dutch to America we have evidence that the Pinkster celebration existed on 17th century Manhattan and
There’s actually some traces still existing today here in this part of the country for those of you who like gardening at the word Pinkster and Pink’s the flower still survives in the word Pinkster bloom eg which some people use which essentially is a corruption of the Dutch picture bloom with you for
This type of pink flower and now what makes me skeptical about the interpretation that Professor white presents is that I see a problem here in explaining how a tradition that starts with a young girl decorated with flowers somehow transforms into a celebration whereby your honor an older man dressed
As a king and those are to me two very different types of generation and I don’t really see how you you know evolve from one to the other and another problem I have is that when we speak about Carnival and we all think about mockery about irony and you don’t really
See that here on the contrary what you see is that the african-american population has a tremendous amount of respect for this person who had been elected as king and that makes me as suspicious in the sense that I think is much more going on here than just a
Carnival and what then could be an alternative explanation and the alternative explanation I came up with is that I decided to put tradition in a broader Atlantic context and to look for other traces of african-americans electing and celebrating their King and I found actually lot
Traces and let me show you a couple and we first have a look at Jamaica and Catherine if you could read from let me show you an example from the ganas yeah and the last example of when a gift to you comes from the from North America
From New Orleans and what this shows to me is that what’s going on in Albany is not really you know a uniquely New York thing it’s actually something that you see also happening in other parts and in the Americas and also intriguing is that I found evidence that the election and
Celebration and honoring of a king was not something that was reduced to that one day of Pentecost and because we find also other references to members of the African American community and showing tribute to a person they had elected as their king and country Kingston by the way Kingston New York
Yeah now where do all these Kings come from in here and I would suggest that we temporarily leave North America and we move to the Iberian Peninsula and I will explain to you later why I’m making that connection and there’s very little research on slave kings in a North American tradition it’s
Quite some research on it in a Latin American and an Iberian tradition because it’s a very old there is a very old tradition in the iberian world where you see that elections of kings is a tradition that occurred in so-called Brotherhood’s Brotherhood’s or fraternities and essentially mutual aid
Associations that were linked to the church and that had a patron and that could be the Virgin Mary it could be a saint but it was tremendously popular and important and in the early modern Iberian world and you had all kinds of Brotherhood’s you had Brotherhood’s even
For the beggars at their own Brotherhood the blinds had their own Brotherhood and and also the slaves so he had these so-called black Brotherhood’s black Brotherhood’s that were very important to the slave community in the iberian world and they were dedicated almost all of them to Our Lady of the Rosary and
Who was considered the product would for the poorest of the poor hands for his life and it was a very hierarchical system so he had a king right but at the same time and it’s this I find very interesting it was also very democratic in the sense that the members of the
Brotherhood’s could elect who was to become the king and not just the king but a series of leadership positions that all had aristocratic names so members of the slave community would elect who was to become their Duke their count their captain their queen and the leader would then be the king
What you see happening in those Brotherhood’s is a very interesting mixture of indigenous African elements with Iberian Catholic elements just to give you a couple of examples and praying the rosary it was it very important to those products but praying the rosary would occur with African music being played
And drums being played and and so you would have the beginning of what was to be later in history call-and-response music and the same would happen during burials he had a Catholic burial but it was there was a procession with African music that would accompany the burial
And you had processions a very important epiphany of course because in a peony you need a king right and then the black king right so the king of the Brotherhood then became the black king very important obviously we’re speaking about biron Peninsula Corpus Christi and very important holiday and also especially in
The case of Portugal Pentecost Pentecost was an extremely important annual celebration if you would go and nowa days for instance to the a source islands still today the biggest annual celebration is Pentecost they don’t call it Pentecost they call it the Feast of the divine a divine spirit to Santos of
The Holy Spirit and the Divine Holy Spirit and now why are these Brotherhood’s so important they are so important in for two reasons I think one is that you can’t preserve some of your African American heritage secondly because those mutual those those those Jews Brotherhood’s give you a
Possibility to organize mutual aid and solidarity among each other and that that’s I think the real power and of those of those brothers No what is important is that at the very early stage we see that the Portuguese export these Brotherhood’s to Africa the first reference we find to it the first black
Brotherhood in Africa dates back to 1495 so already in late 15th century late Middle Ages essentially early morning on the Cape Verde Islands we later beginning of the 16th century we find the same Brotherhood’s on the island of Santo Mei and eventually also in the famous kingdom of Kongo and the kingdom
Of Kongo where we know from a letter written by the representative of the of the Congo Kings in Portugal and that the ambassador in Portugal representing the Congo Kingdom writes in his letter that already in the early sixteenth century in the in the capital of the kingdom of
Kongo they were already seven Catholic brothers and they were extremely prestigious and to be a member of the Brotherhood meant a lot to people and we later also find references in Portuguese Angola and then those Brotherhood’s and pass on to the Americas and we find them pretty much everywhere in Latin America
Especially in the case of Brazil and and where we see very similar rituals to the ones I I mentioned to you I’ll give you two examples I will give you an example from the Cape Verde Islands and I will give you an example from from Brazil and you will see the similarities country
Yeah and that’s Africa and instead Cape for Islands let me show Brazil yeah now what is with this what is amazing about the case of Brazil is that in some rural areas you still find these fraternities today so so many decades after abolition you still find it yeah
And and I think the reason you find it is essentially that for many black people even after abolition mutual aid and mutual aid organized by people you can trust remained important so those people still today they have those ancient traditions that have their roots in Africa we’re brought to Brazil and somehow
Still survive today and I will share a couple of examples with you and since it still exists today I’m able to share with you some video materials we will see three scenes the first scene is an altar it sits in it’s essentially afro Catholic altar and the second scene is a
Celebration song in honor of the king of the fraternity and the third scene is a procession whereby you see how the king is paraded through town so let’s have a look and hopefully this will work out by the way this is a painting an 18th century painting where you see such a
Procession but now we will see in the video yeah We will contact you will put in his picture one who’s our buddy Gabriel de Santa maría This is the king procession now how do I make now a connection to New York right because we have been speaking about Africa we’ve been speaking about Brazil how making a connection to New York and the connection I make is through the so called charter generation meaning the
First generation of slaves and as we know as historians that that generation often had a tremendous influence on how African American identity would develop in certain parts because the first generation in a way stat the model and when we look at the first slaves living on Manhattan during the Dutch era we
Realized that those slaves were not brought to Manhattan and in the context of a Dutch slave trading operation about the Dutch had their own slave trading network yet this was before the Dutch were able to develop their own slave trading network so these are essentially people who are on Portuguese ships on
Their way to Brazil those ships are being attacked by the Dutch the Dutch captured slaves on those ships and then dv8 those people to Manhattan and use them there as slaves and so let’s have a look at at the origin of of these people and luckily thanks to their names we’re
Able to to identify their origin and let’s have a look at origen what we see here is something quite remarkable that the earliest slave community in Manhattan is a community that almost exclusively originates from parts of Africa where you had a tremendously strong Portuguese influence we’re speaking about Angola Congo Cape
Verde Islands some to make remarkably some of these people are actually born in Portugal one was born in Spain others have been born in Latin America yes so quite remarkable when you look at the origin of the very earliest slave community and we’re speaking now about the early seventeenth century um for
Those of you who know and are familiar with with languages it will perhaps not come as a surprise to you that we also have evidence that some of these people spoke Portuguese and the reason why I say this is that some of you may be familiar with a creole language called
Papiamento it’s a language that is spoken today on the Dutch islands of Aruba and curaçao and the slave community on those islands has essentially the same origin as the ones that once upon a time used to live on the island of Manhattan so it’s quite possible that’s in the early 17th
Century and the slave population on Manhattan which baked would speak among themselves in a Portuguese Creole and now do we also have evidence that besides their names and the language that those Africans brought Afro Christian traditions with them to the Americas and that sets of course a much
More difficult question because we have so little information about the slave community and but we do have some information we do know for instance that these people when they had children they were very eager to have their children baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church and in the Dutch Reformed Church and at
That time there was definitely no Protestant supremacy yet it comes later but at that time it was not there and the church would welcome these children and the reasons I think that we need to stress is that they welcome to these children to the Dutch Reformed Church
Because they knew that the parents had been baptized and they recognized that Catholic baptized baptism as a Christian baptism and that’s had they not been baptized the Dutch Reformed Church would never have allowed those children to and the Dutch Reformed Church but they did they did at least for a while and
Because what happens is essentially what Katherine has been telling us what happens very quickly is that you see within the slave-owning community concerns what does that mean when this child is baptized will I still be able to sell this child when the child is old enough to work so owners become very
Concerned about the consequences of baptism and it’s are the owners that are pushing the Dutch Reformed Church to become restricted they’re forcing the church to become more strict and the result is that the church at one point says well and this baptism that’s not a real baptism that’s only like a Catholic
Portuguese thing they just throw some water over their hats and doesn’t mean anything so they no longer recognize it as baptism and that’s the moment also they stop welcoming their children to the Dutch Reformed Church which means of course that some are admitted and some actually remain for generations in the
Dutch Reformed Church so there was a black Protestant community on Manhattan in the early 17th century and that and people from that group would remain members of the Dutch Reformed Church for many generations but those were small groups and the majority was not and the majority essentially then had no other
Church no other choice but to develop its own mutual aid its own solidarity among themselves which of course makes it likely and that this mutual aid may I don’t have evidence but it may well have been organized in some type of fraternity Brotherhood of organization hence the election of
Kings and now I do have some evidence from elsewhere I do have some evidence that in fact and slave communities originating from parts of Africa where the Portuguese influence was very strong that they would on their own organize those types of Brotherhood’s and and the example I bring is very familiar to
Catherine as an example from the Danish Virgin Islands and if you could read it for me yeah let me just interrupt for one second the Musel for those of you who are not familiar with the term abuse all is is a isn’t is an enslaved African who has not yet been baptized sorry
Yeah especially this this conclusion like the reference to two burials because that was of course the main the main task of these fraternities and the main task was essentially that you would rely on the Brotherhood for your for your burial and and you would give every
Every month a little bit of your own money even if you were extremely poor and and you wouldn’t you would give that to the Brotherhood because the problem give you the promise that the day you die you will have a decent funeral and that meant a lot and now this quote I
Think might might somehow perhaps and come as a surprise to some people right who are not familiar with the fact that enslaved Africans would in fact bring some Christian elements already from Africa with them to the Americas right in that the history of Christianity black Christianity does not start in the
Americas it actually starts in Africa but for those of you who are familiar with African Studies it should not come as a surprise right and let me just show you this famous painting where you will see you know Congolese leaders welcoming and Portuguese missionaries and but also
Some some quotes from from scholars and indicating that becoming a Christian meant a lot to these people and it even made them feel superior over over others who had not become Christian let me share those two quotes yeah so so becoming a Christian right made you really special and and they
Come with this mindset to the Americas right and that it I think explains a lot when it comes to the behavior and reaction within the slave community to to Christianity and but somehow it seems to me and maybe I should pause at that this moment in my presentation and also
Raise that question and you know that that when it comes to to the popular perception of black Christianity in the United States that somehow not not in people’s awareness and and I wonder why is that that it’s that it’s not a problem for people to accept that’s that
The slave enslaved Africans brought and to the Americas and their own interpretation of Islam but why is it that there’s so much resistance among people to accept that also many enslaved Africans brought to the Americas their own interpretation of Christianity you know and I wonder why why today’s and
Maybe that something in the Q&A we could we could elaborate on for a second um and I think that’s also a question that that is worth debating here in North America because this is not just a question of the plies to the Caribbean and to South America let me illustrate
This to you with the case of South Carolina South Carolina where we have the very interesting report of a missionary worker called Francis olysio Protestant right and comes to the slave community with the intention in 1710 to do missionary work and then all of a sudden he realizes oh but they already
Know about Christianity yeah they were already Christians right but they had the wrong Christianity so um and then the other quote I think is very interesting because it shows to us that some type of well sorry Catherine you could retail yeah and what we also find is clear references that some type
Of product existed among those communities and very interesting we also have evidence that some slave communities in South Carolina especially on the sea islands that remained most isolated that they would elect community leaders and they would call those community leaders their kings community who recalls yeah still in the 1950s
Actually when he’s interviewed that in the old days there were community leaders and kings now that’s of course South Carolina right does that mean that the same must have happened here Manhattan in the surrounding area we don’t have proof but we do have some evidence that also here in this part of
The country there were slaves that did in fact bring some Christian elements with them and to the Americas Catherine so now we’re switching back to to New York yeah and mind you this is this is recorded at the time when Catholicism was prohibited in New York and let me
Also briefly also remind you that Sojourner Truth herself her real name was not sir Donna truth her real name was Isabel and Isabel is clearly not a Dutch Calvinist named Isabel is really a Portuguese Catholic name so that really proves though is that some at least some Iberian after Iberian elements did
Survive within the descendants of doctors of those early slaves I come to my conclusion why did the tradition end and we know of course about prohibition in 1811 and we see the decline elsewhere surprisingly we don’t see signs of protest and my explanation that the Pinkster celebration gradually
Disappears it’s twofold one reason I think clearly is abolition because those those fraternities of Brotherhood’s are perceived by the slave community here something which is still relating to the times when there were slaves and once abolition comes they want something different and they find something different I think also in the context of
What we call the Second Great Awakening Great Awakening which in my view it’s not really an awakening because the foundations in many cases were already there but in any case we know the importance of the awakening and we find than the development of the first black Protestant churches and those Protestant
Churches of course come with with a different mindset and and one difference of course is that certain things that that that you were allowed to do in the old days when you celebrated Pinkster are no longer possible for instance to drink excessively alcohol possible and also certain dances and become a problem
Yeah here you go right Pinkster becomes becomes of course your problem yeah and you clearly see that in in also references to early members of black baptised Methodist churches and where people recall the old days when pictures still existed but very negatively yeah also among African Americans themselves
To distance themselves from the way celebrations used to be in the old days yeah when I come to the conclusion and my conclusion is that despite of course and this is this transformation despite this change I do think that we should stress that that the change does not mean that the african-american
Community would entirely draw its back towards what had happened in the past I do see a transition of some of the former elements to to the new Christianity that they embrace in the context of the Baptist and Methodist churches elements such as first of all and the disagreement with what it means
To be a Christian something which which Katherine already mentioned and I think it’s logical venues that you see the development of black churches and African Americans want to organize the church among themselves and I’m gonna have their interpretation of what Christianity means to them and which
Again as I would argue as a tradition yeah it doesn’t start in the 19th century secondly in those churches you still see clearly the importance of certain body movements of music the whole gospel tradition it’s something which which you can relate to what existed earlier and very important I
Think the emphasis on mutual aid in the sense that and I think we make a mistake when we speak about African American Christianity and we only speak about faith it was of course faith but it was also and very importantly mutual aid solidarity among each other yeah a tradition of calling calling other
Members your sisters and your brothers yeah that’s really you know at the core of what what were the mutual aid organizations and lastly and I’m really wildly speculating here but maybe not without a reason lastly I would mention at the importance of Pentecost to those african-american Christian churches and
Again it might be just speculation but it could well be that that that the importance of Pentecost is an importance that can be traced way back in history and let me end my presentation with the last words of my book it’s a final reflection and we will see so journal
Truth coming back to us as a journey through to us and so journey truth I lie ting the importance to her of a king a wise King as your leader yes if you were thanks there King thank you all so much [Applause]
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