No More, No More

Slavery and Cultural Resistance in Havana and New Orleans

2004
Author:

Daniel E. Walker

An illuminating look at the festival performances of slaves in Havana and New Orleans

This ambitious book looks at how people of African descent in two societies—Havana and New Orleans in the nineteenth century—created their own forms of cultural resistance to the slave regime’s assault. No More, No More elucidates the economic, social, cultural, and demographic operations at work in two cities and the efforts at cultural resistance embodied in public performances.

This is what good comparative history should be: daring and inventive in its sweep, with an acute awareness that what matters most is a rich and nuanced knowledge of local issues. Daniel E. Walker takes us on an excursion rich in cultural interpretation—and reinterpretation—of the ways slaves challenged the limits imposed on them by an oppressive system. This book is sure to have a lasting effect on the study of slave resistance in the Americas.

Richard Blackett, Vanderbilt University

However urban slave societies might have differed from their rural counterparts, they still relied on a concerted assault on the psychological, social, and cultural identity of their African-descended inhabitants to maintain power and control. This ambitious book looks at how people of African descent in two such societies—Havana and New Orleans in the nineteenth century—created and maintained their own forms of cultural resistance to the slave regime’s assault and, in the process, put forth autonomous views of self and the social landscape.

In Havana’s annual Día de Reyes festival and in the weekly activities that took place at New Orleans’s Congo Square, author Daniel Walker identifies specific cultural beliefs and activities that Africans brought to the New World and modified in order to withstand and contest the dehumanizing effects of oppression. No More, No More crosses disciplinary boundaries as well, elucidating the economic, social, cultural, and demographic operations at work in two cities and the wide-scale efforts at cultural resistance embodied in public performances.


Daniel E. Walker is founding director of the Center for Public History and the Arts and historian for the Black Voice Foundation. His articles have appeared in the CLA Journal, the Griot, the Western Journal of Black Studies, and the Journal of Caribbean History.

This is what good comparative history should be: daring and inventive in its sweep, with an acute awareness that what matters most is a rich and nuanced knowledge of local issues. Daniel E. Walker takes us on an excursion rich in cultural interpretation—and reinterpretation—of the ways slaves challenged the limits imposed on them by an oppressive system. This book is sure to have a lasting effect on the study of slave resistance in the Americas.

Richard Blackett, Vanderbilt University

No More, No More is a refreshing approach to understanding the cultural history of African slaves and freed blacks in Cuba and Louisiana.

Philip Howard, author of Changing History: Afro-Cuban Cabildos and Societies of Color in the Nineteenth Century

Walker insightfully analyzes the meaning of public performances in the context of dimensions of psychosocial oppression of urban blacks.

Journal of American History

An important contribution. A compelling cross-cultural narrative that tackles a number of important questions for students of race relations in general and comparative slave societies in particular.

American Historical Review

Excellent research. Walker achieves his goal of showing the reality of the institution of slavery with his use of poetry, pictures, and other quotes.

Material Culture

Innovative, ingenious, and backed by a thorough investigation . . . Overall No More, No More is a well researched, very motivating academic work. Comparative studies such as this one are not frequent and a fresh, more profound examination of the forms of cultural slave resistance in New Orleans and Havana would be a welcomed addition to those interested slavery in the Greater Caribbean.

Caribbean Studies

Contents

Introduction

1.El Día de Reyes and Congo Square: Links to Africa and the Americas
2.De0ning Space: Social Control and Public Space
3.Regulating Domesticity: The Fight for the Family
4.Imagining the African/Imagining Blackness
5.Negotiating Racial Hierarchies: The Threat of Unity

Conclusion

Acknowledgments
Notes

Index