Follow was on twitter at a booktv and like us on facebook. Facebook. Com booktv. Booktv continues now with Sylviane Diouf. She represents a history of people who escape this labor and created selfsufficiency mayors and desolate regions of the south. This is about 50 minutes. Thank you very much for the introduction, and im delighted to be here to play the role of questioner of Sylviane Diouf the marvelous new book slaverys exiles. And at the end we will have a little time for questions from the audience. Theres a microphone over there for them. So keep it in mind that would when we finish our conversation. Just remind you what was said, you can purchase for book outside and its well worth doing. I think to begin sylviane wanted to read a little passage from the book. Would you like to start that way . Actually at the end. Okay. So we will plunge writing. Actually let me just ask you since the term around is maybe not totally widely known, what exactly is a maroon . Yes. The term comes from the spanish. Used for castle which wandered off the farms cattle. And by extension it was used for runaway slaves. In spanish and french, it becomes maroon in english. What is interesting also is that even though the term is used as meaning any kind of runaway, then it is released for people in the woods the swamps. But in the United States, maroon was reserved for large maroon communities. In the United States maroon was action called runaways are outliers. These are knowing we think of runaway slaves we think of people coming up to the north getting to candidate. But you talk about people established communities in the south . Yes. Bikini \30{l1}s{l0}\30{l1}s{l0} also individuals that leave, who remained in the south and decided to leave an autonomous way in the woods and the swamps. Now, how did you get interested in this subject. Because its a very interesting and unusual warm but not that many people written about in the United States. I didnt really started wanting to write the book. I wanted to read books. I had been reading a lot of maroons in jamaica, in brazil in cuba. I was looking former maroons in the estates. Who they were what they were doing and where they live. I couldnt find anything. A chapter here and there something on the particular community or something on a particular region it but nothing really comprehensive and detailed over a large space and covering the entire time of slavery. I said maybe theres nothing to really find. Let me just look. And as i started to look i actually found out a lot of things so i decided to write the book. Excellent. There is a vast literature on slavery in the United States, as you well know. Why do you think this particular aspect was very neglected what you are quite right, this is really the first book about maroons as a general phenomenon in american and southern history there were some articles here and there, but not really very much. Why do you think its been neglected . When i mentioned to other scholars, im doing research on the reins in the United States, oh, the seminoles. And i said no no, no. Him talk about virginia carolinas, georgia louisiana and people were surprised. Well, whether maroons there . When we look at maroons in the United States, we think of florida and virginia because those were large communities. Thats what people think about when you think of maroons they think of brazil jamaica. The idea of those large growing communities, well, they were the exception. For the americas, maroon communities were actually small, not as big as what they think they were. Sometimes only several months, several years, one generation. So what i decided to do for the United States, again because those big communities, why i couldnt find it i would look for individuals and groups and communities based on three criteria. And that was they have to have access to the wilderness, they have to be [inaudible] no cultural whatsoever even loose. And through those criteria, then i really find a whole world that has very much remained under the radar. Even though they would the majority, and my criteria excluded a number of people. For example they were just there for a few days. It also excluded actually the maroons of florida because they were not leaving florida in secret. And the maroons they were not living in the wilderness and they were not living in secret either. Right. You mentioned the brazilian example, very well known that there was a film a few years ago, about the brazilian this great brazilian a gigantic settlement. So given that they are secret, thats one of the criteria, how did you find information about them . The maroons didnt leave diaries, letters. They didnt publish newspapers presumably. They were in secret so what kind of sources did you manage to find . Yes, that was for me kind of a surprise because i stopped thinking well where am i going to look for population . I just, for example, in the 1600s, i used the occupants. It was very early on those mention maroons, again they did his bedroom but we can see where they were what their activities were. Then you have all the books treaties were mentioned as well. I also used newspaper articles that mention when a settlement was discovered as was what the maroons were doing, their activities. One very good source was runaway slave ads. They are very detailed. You can follow people, actually. And i did that for several maroons, including african maroons. What i did for some of them was follow them from the slave ship to the woods and then sometimes back to the plantation where they were captured and then back to the woods where they would run away again sometimes with shackles on their legs. And then also other documents. For example, there were trials of maroons and trials of people who held them. One source i didnt even think of at the beginning was autobiographies and memoirs of the former runaways. Sometimes, you know, sometimes they talk when you live in the woods. But sometimes their sudden members. For example [inaudible] his sister was a maroon four years. She lived in the woods for years and actually had three children there. And another source, i shall extraordinary, was the interviews. As you know about 2300 slaves were and he did in the 1930s, and their eyes are really the personal things, the intimate thanks. Because they were talking about my uncle, my aunt my father was living in the woods and what they were doing, and what the community, whats the relationship with the committee was. So those were lots of different things, and by commanding and you can really draw, reveal the most accurate process as you can can. In jamaica if im not mistaken, the authorities, the british government, et cetera eventually contacted treaties or agree to treaties with a maroon communities. Was that anything like that in the United States . In the United States where i, though, there were no treaties of that sort. Communities were small, you know i study one individual but there was never that kind of situation like occurred in jamaica. What kind of places do these maroon communities established themselves in . The landscape, are we talking about places very far from the plantations, or actually pretty close . What sort of Geographic Area are we talking about . Thats one of the things, i realized kind of very early that i have to construct my own tour to really explore and examine the breadth. I realized that [inaudible] did not reflect the reality. And when i looked at whats been going on on the ground i came up with the ideas of the maroons, and within the maroons landscape, when we think of those, we may have this idea of people [inaudible] but what i saw was that actually maroons live in a very large area. The borderline maroons live at the border of the plantation, but they also went to the cities. The people who lived in the hinterland, and by in the land to what they mean is not that people were living far away but they would stick to these areas sometimes not very, very far but difficult to access. The hinterland and the borderland were part of the maroon landscape. That landscape, maroon landscape, actually into the plantation. And into the cities. We have a very large i also saw the maroons use the entire southern landscape. They moved from one state to another. They were using the entire geography to their advantage. What role did family relations play in maroon communities . When people escape from plantations and lived in the woods or in other areas, do they have families come with them or do they go back to farms and plantations to see their families . I mean, how does family relations play in this . Thats one of the things i sort of, was really fascinating. When people run away to the north or canada they severed all relations to the family. It was something very hard to do. They would spend the rest of their lives wondering, did they make it north or did they die . One of the reasons, there are many but one of the reasons why maroons became maroons is that what they wanted to do is to live with their families, to be free to live free with their families. And what they did was for example, the old family would leave the plantation and settle at the border of the plantation, or in the hinterland. But there were other things. As you know slavery, look at the families and with the domestic slider that became even more dramatic with people being sold from virginia to alabama. So what people did was to use a number of strategies to keep their families together. For example, if one person was slated in virginia, was slated to be deported to alabama then that slate would run away to the woods and stay near the plantation. Or they would then go to alabama and then the others would follow. Then there was a third plantation. People would walk back to maryland or north carolina. And each time at the end of the road they would stay in the woods because that was the only place where they could be with their family, and that was the only way they had to keep their families together. Thats very interesting. It suggests that your bookshelves of course, and the way youve been describing it, we shouldnt think of a sharp, rigid distinction between maroons living away from plantation and people who are slaves on farms and plantations. They seem to intersect with each other, communicate with each other. Presumably maroons get some kind of assistance, slaves were living within slavery maybe food maybe information. Absolutely. The continued relation between people who are living in the land or at the borderland and people on the plantation and in the cities and the links continued. Just to give you an example he used to feed one young woman, celeste, who lived in the woods. She would come at night to the plantation and he would give her food. So that was very very. Maroons believed always went back to the plantation. Not only to see the family but that was one of the reasons, you know, to get i think im just for love and comfort and friendship. But also to get food ticket information. The role of the kennedy was really crucial. The role of the community was really crucial. Not going to see their families and save quarters but they also went to the plantation took evidence, food slaughtered cattle and pigs. Went to the cities to trade. So the maroons, im talking about the landscape. The maroons really went all over and continued to have a very very crucial and very close relations with the people who were slaves. Fugitive slaves who escaped to the north, some of them became very famous abolitionists abolitionists, as you well know speakers, Frederick Douglass being the most prominent of them, quite a few others henry box brown, many others. And the abolitionists made a big, devoted a lot of attention to talk about fugitive slaves and publicizing what happened to fugitive slaves. Big maroons split apart in the serb abolitionists consciousness . Did abolitionists talk about maroons . Did they use them as evidence of the evils of slavery or do they tend to ignore the . They decided to ignore them. That to me was kind of interesting and kind of well maybe not that interesting actually. When i mentioned the maroons it was to portray them as lost souls living in the wilderness with wild beasts and the idea behind that was to show the evil of slavery the people have to live like wild beasts to escape. To escape enslavement. At the same time the idea of black people being fooled was not exactly what the abolitionists were about. So these abolitionists have needs, lets put it that way. And so they didnt mention them at all. Very very rarely. How do these maroons i mean my image anyway, our image of the old south is that its full of slave patrols, you know people looking for fugitives looking for slaves who were off the plantation without permission, without a pass. How do these little groups of communities managed to escape to being captured . Thats one of the things that is really exciting to see. And, of course many were captured, but you also have people who managed to remain you know, for years. Im thinking for example of a man and his wife and he and his wife and their children live in the woods for more than 15 years and they got out they got out of the woods after emancipation. They spent seven years 10 years, 20 years in the woods. And you have to really admire those were able to go to the plantation several times a week. I have another example of this man who lives a few miles from his wife and two children, and he lived there for five years until emancipation. And during that time his wife had two children, so the plantation was always the last time i saw it was the day the runaway. He actually came three times a week. [laughter] you know to see her for five years. Its extraordinary. Without the complicity of the community, this wouldnt have been possible because the caverns are very close one to another. And people knew either on the general, you know, in a general manner are very precisely where the maroons lived. They did not talk. But one of the way that people lived at the border of plantation, and that to me was a revelation. Because we live at the border of plantation, you know, its a very risky situation. Everybody was around. So you have to disappear, and kind of it was something that to me was absolutely mind boggling. People also live underground. So they dug houses underground. People dug those houses 60 under the ground. [inaudible] when you think of the kind of resourcefulness and creativity that you need to be able to do these, but also when you think of the fact that parents thought it was so important they could get children out of the plantation but put him in those caves and some of the children never got out of the caves. When youre a parent, when you think about, its really hard wrenching that the best option that those parents found for the children to be free was for them to live underground. And one thing that also that i found you have all these incredible people want to be free and remain free. At the same time what i found was that the story that people lived underground newspapers in the south didnt mention that when they discover decades. Nobody had anything to say about that. There was no command. Even the abolitionists didnt mention it. This is really, i mean, the maroons lived underground for as unseen. So thats what we mean ive seen references to People Living in caves but these were not normal caves, whatever that is. They were these underground things that were dug and filled and actually could be fairly extensive in some ways, interesting. How do you think maroons fits into the larger strip of slavery . Is it a major part of it . Is it a small side issue . Is it part of a spectrum ranging from people on plantations resisting to slave we billions . How do you fit it into a story of what we know is continued resistance by africanamericans to slavery . I think community, its a major part because just in terms of sheer members and we dont know what the numbers are by the way but i would probably say there were thousands of maroons. Again, individuals, small groups, families, large communities, especially in the swamps all over the south. The sheer numbers we cannot what to me is the niche in their place in the greater story is that they were unique in many ways. Very few people live in the wild even less underground. They also out of a special kind of freedom they created a nationality to life as hegemony. When somebody run away from the south, which was to cities that are when people run away to the north to canada or when even for free blacks, the control is segregated against, and they think they could not do, they were not allowed to do but only the maroons. They created that to live in the slavery south and in the free north. And what i can see that its also the fact that this idea of voluntary separation and selfdetermination, this is something that is deep within the africanamerican community. And you find that actually in many different forms whether its literature, cultural, political, economy, social or i can see the in the black church. I can see that with islam, the black power movement. So all this idea of voluntary separation and selfdetermination, we see the maroons as really the precursor of ideas that really run deep into the africanamerican experience. A lot of information in the book is from the colonial era. You said you dont with laws are early on. As the south gets more populated come as the 19th 19th century goes along, the population grows, the woods begin to be taken over by plantations and farms. I mean, does the opportunity or the options for the maroons shrink as there are less areas to kind of survived in away from white controlled . Well, what i saw actually probably devolution of large communities. Many of the large communities that i find, to large communities that i do one chapter for each was in the 1780s. But then the other communities i mean in the 1860s with agricultural settlement, you know, people cultivating corn and rice and raising cows and pigs. So those groups continued to escape. Maymaybe on a smaller scale. They continued to be individuals and families up to the end. And actually we can see maroons coming out of the woods, some coming up when the yankees came to the south and going out of the woods with the army. We also see some maroons actually enrolling in the army. Some maroons, if im not mistaken, stayed in woods, in case for a while and then headed off to the north right, and candida . Those were cases could not go out on being maroons and they need to then go to the north. I asked some examples of that. There were also where people wanted to go to the north and could not again for one reason or another and leave the bruins for maybe a year or two years and then found an opportunity and then went away. One of the areas you mention which doesnt sound like a very hospitable place the Great Dismal Swamp of virginia. Seems like they were marooned communities. That sounds like its off the beaten path, right . Yes. The reason why say they were so many roots there we dont keep the numbers in the 19 century between two and 3000 maroons there. Probably exaggerated. But the dismal swamp jack a big the dismal swamp jack is really big. People actually run away there. And some were really living, really really secretly you know in the swamp. They have farms they could cultivate and others, very interesting part as well. Others were still being maroons but working for enslaved people. There were people who worked in the swamp on the canal and maroons sometimes were employed by slaves and gave them part of the rations. But thats one of the things that is also very interesting the fact, one of the things many of them did was to trade. We see maroons at the borderlands and in the inner land trading, for example, the day that they gathered. They trade with slaves and free blacks as was white people. One of the things that they trade was that they traded for was guns and ammunition. We are going to turn soon, open the floor for questions from the audience, but i wanted to allow sylviane to maybe do a little reading from the book. Why dont you do that . One of the things coming in a, i think needs to be mentioned, that, you know to be a marooned was not for everyone. It was difficult. It was a hard life. People had to be very creative, had to be confident. They had of extraordinary quality to survive in the wild. Some good very very will and actually some of them became heroes. When you read the interviews you see people, they were they didnt have to work. They lived well. They ate better than we did it so there were a lot of successes that they had but they were also, also a lot of difficulties. So maroons celebrate success and also success and disasters. But in the pursuit of freedom and autonomy they created and developed new forms of life. They still measured themselves. They knew it was rewarding. They put their lives on the line every day to be free. Stories of courage and resourcefulness, freedom one. Someone who cannot understand what a marooned in return even when he was hungry suffered hard times the latter simply replied. I think i choose to be free and i do not come back. Thank you. [applause] we have time for a few questions. There is a microphone over there eric so anyone who would like to pose a question to sylviane please kind of strolled over to the microphone and there you are. Okay. Hello. My question is im just wondering about the geographical danger. I just want to know if you could expand on that, what did you mean by that . Well for example, there were people who lived in caves, some who got out mostly at night. During the day they remained hidden. We have some examples the man and his wife and 15 show the wife and the children never got out of the cave. The lives completely indicates. We have many examples, interviews of people remembered when children got out of the cave, and some were said to have been blind, some were almost blind. They were very shy. They didnt want to be a round people. They were said to be understandable. There were people who actually spent all their lives, not all their lives, but children in the cave. Go ahead. I just want to compliment you and thank you for sharing our history as part of our history that i really didnt know about. I knew about in the caribbean not in the u. S. It makes me feel very proud to know that we fought and we struggled, and we survived. Thank you. Thank you. [applause] picking up from there im a teacher and my students are very excited to hear me talk about how excited i am about this learning. But i do have a question about the relationship between the maroons and the United States with those in the caribbean. You did mention in the book something about captain to joe to joe who existed in the caribbean and somehow remain his name of doctor. Was big indication between them . If so, how . Was big indication between them . If so, how . We dont feel, i think i talk about the community. I have a chapter on the community in georgia and South Carolina. Wonderful, a really interesting community because its a community that deals with war camp and that was unique in the United States. A whole war camp. One of the leaders was the captain. We dont know what to wear the that come from because we know that the african name the most popular african name in slavery. So it may just be come a been his real name. But there was also a possibility that people from the caribbean because when you of course actually people live in the caribbean before being forces led to the United States, the maven some kind of i mean, jamaicans and others arrive there would talk about the maroons of jamaica. We dont know. I was wondering about what your Research Revealed about the educational system within decades and the committee they had . Did they have any access to education . No. Anything at all . No. Remember, slaves, it was against the law to teach slaves to read and write. Many of them managed to acquire that knowledge anyway but education was not something that was readily available. You kept mentioning answered going to the seas and im having a hard time imagining how theyre going, what they were doing and what sort of agency you know latitude they had to the other question is, would any particular areas in the south where there were sort of higher concentrations . At the height of it, how many maroons would you say there were in the south . The first question was about the cities. And yes there are plenty of examples of maroons who just walked to the cities and went there, and some are well known. For example, people said, were saying, you know they go from here to here and they see some Security Forces there who try to get them. They traded for the fish et cetera. There was just like where geographically might have been the most difficult to say the because there were maroons all over. There were maroons here in new york. There were maroons in brooklyn, in harlem, there were maroons in every state, you know . We know that, for example, in louisiana because of the i mean the landscape there, you know, of the swamps, there were a lot. But they were in South Carolina and virginia. Thank you. Remember, it was pretty hard to get to the north. Yes. Except almost all the future slaves who got to the north were from maryland, virginia kentucky the states yeah. Bordering on free soil. If you were in alabama, it would have been pretty hard to get to the north. So either you become a maroon, or many fugitives went to cities like mobile montgomery, etc. To sort of blend in with the free black populations there. Because getting any further than that, it would have been pretty difficult. We probably have time for a couple more questions so that sylviane can go out and sign the books. And then the rest can ask questions when shes signing books. So yes, go ahead, sir. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. Its very interesting. I was curious about the maroons in the swamps and their relationship to rice growing. Rice, of course, is something that is grown in swamps, and we know that many of the slaves came with the knowledge of growing rice from africa and therefore, going out into the swamps would actually have been quite an attractive thing for them from an agricultural perspective of supporting themself. Yes. But actually, when i was looking at what maroon communities were growing in terms of food most were growing corn. And for the rice i found that in louisiana and South Carolina which are the two areas where, you know, people were used to rice but mostly the main crop in the United States in maroon communities was corn as well as vegetables like squash peas. And, yeah, so thats concern. Growing rice requires a kind of hydraulic system of canals and gates and its probably not something maroons would have been in a position to construct, you know . And there are these, you know, small plots. Thats one of the things also. The maroon communities that had gardens as they call them, you know fields were small, were you know, were rather small. So thats again, you know when you are talking about rice, it has to be more expansive. Okay. And the final question sir. I havent read your work, but im looking forward to it