Six days a week of work from sunrise to sunset and occasionally eating food unfit for an animal to consume were a part of life on the fields. The cramped, dirt-floored shacks where plantation slaves resided had little to no furniture.
How long did a slave typically live?
- The average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites, as a result of this high neonatal and childhood mortality rate. Fewer slaves than whites, on average, reached old age.
- Slaves used their limited free time to sing and dance, especially on Sundays and holidays. Slaves played a variety of musical instruments, but they also practiced "patting juba," which is a highly intricate and rhythmic kind of handclapping.
- A father can have one owner, his "wife" and kids another. A mother, a father, and children were the only members of some slave households. In these instances, the same owner owned the entire family. Others were members of close-knit families where the father was owned differently from the mother and kids.
- Many slaves experienced digestive and mental disorders, fevers, dropsy, dysentery, and other illnesses. There were frequent epidemics, such as the cholera outbreak in Grenada in 1830, as well as yaws, a non-venereal form of syphilis.
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