Pinkster

By: David N. Gellman

Source:

 Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass

Pinkster

From the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century Pinkster was the most important African American festival for blacks living in New York's Hudson River valley, the New York City area, and parts of New Jersey. While local whites observed and even participated in the celebration, Pinkster served the cultural and social needs of mid-Atlantic African Americans, providing an expressive outlet for many northern slaves. The decline of Pinkster in the nineteenth century reflected the effects of the transition from slavery to freedom on both blacks and whites in the region.

Pinkster began as a Dutch holiday commemorating Pentecost—when Christ's apostles are said to have become possessed by the Holy Spirit. In the Anglican tradition the holiday is observed as Whitsuntide. The Pinkster holiday, taking place seven weeks after Easter, also marked the change of seasons. The widespread ownership of slaves among the Dutch who settled Long Island, the Hudson River valley, and parts of New Jersey familiarized African slaves and their descendants with the holiday.

Historians and folklorists have debated the degree to which Pinkster bore the direct imprint of African cultural importations versus the extent to which Pinkster was an adaptation by mid-Atlantic blacks of the European calendar and European religious beliefs for African American purposes. The Christian Pentecost's emotional content, the forcefulness of spiritual possession, may have resonated with those African religious experiences that slaves brought to the New World emphasizing visionary transformations and ongoing spiritual connections to ancestors. Such conversion-like experiences depended less on shared language and literacy than on other forms of worship. Yet, as performed, the celebration of Pinkster by northern blacks seems to owe as much or more to the opportunity provided by this late spring holiday to enforce ties among slaves ordinarily isolated from one another in white households, to the ability of African Americans to maintain and reinforce African folkways, and to claim cultural space for themselves in an oppressive system. Pinkster clearly represented a blending of many cultures, as Africans from a variety of origins celebrated a Dutch holiday in an English colony still inhabited by Native Americans. Like some European carnivalesque rituals, there was a significant element of status reversal built into the celebration, with the oppressed temporarily occupying positions of authority.

The festival could occupy the better part of a week. Highlights included the erection of stalls where blacks sold food and drink and the selection of the festival's king sometimes designated as “King Charles,” who, accompanied by musicians and drummers, presided over the festivities. African dancing, food, and colorful dress drew blacks, whites, and Indians to the proceedings from great distances. According to one account, native-born Africans played a conspicuous role instructing American-born blacks how to celebrate the day, suggesting the African nature of the holiday's observance. A 1737 newspaper account of Pinkster in Manhattan described black participants' assembling in ethnic groupings and dancing in military style, as well as drumming and banjo playing.

Although African Americans participated in Pinkster celebrations in a wide array of settings, the most complete documentation and perhaps the longest-surviving Pinkster festival, comes from Albany, New York, where the revelry took place on Pinkster Hill and included the staging of an African dance performance conducted in a public amphitheater. In Albany the African-born Pinkster “king” and his entourage collected “tribute” from the town's residents. White commentary on Pinkster mingled expressions of admiration, contempt, and bemusement. A “Pinkster Ode,” published in 1803, commented on the Albany scene:

Every colour revels there
From ebon black to lillie fair.
Ah! how much happiness they see,
In one short day of Liberty!

The celebration of Pinkster declined for a variety of reasons during the nineteenth century, reflecting the changing structure of black life as slavery grudgingly gave way to freedom in the mid-Atlantic region. In Albany white city officials became increasingly uncomfortable with both the unregulated revelry and the racial mixing of the festival; an 1811 Albany ordinance banned the festival. Such racial mixing proved a much greater threat to the social order in a world in which most African Americans would be free people than in one where race and slavery were largely synonymous. Slave rebellions in Saint Domingue and Richmond, Virginia, showed that blacks could not be counted on to quietly accept subordination. The passage of time also may have eroded the cultural continuities that nurtured the holidays, as both Dutch and black populations became further removed from the ways of their forebears, particularly since importations of African slaves to New York had virtually stopped by the American Revolution.

Perhaps more important than direct repression or the waning of ties to the African (and Dutch) past were the shifting priorities of African Americans in the north, particularly among black leaders. With the coming of freedom, some African Americans prioritized public displays of citizenship and orderliness, as blacks sought to claim their rightful place as members of a republican society. Parades led by marshals, or merely the inculcation of middle class–style orderliness, seemed more appropriate to the task of citizenship and empowerment than festivals presided over by kings. Thus, Pinkster gradually faded from mid-Atlantic city and country landscapes.

Pinkster played a vital role in African American life for much of the eighteenth century and continues to inform the way historians interpret northern black culture. At one level, Pinkster provided a valuable outlet from the rigors, repetitiveness, abuses, and isolation of slave life. For rural blacks, the opportunity to attend festivities in New York City or Albany magnified such attractions. What one historian terms the “safety valve” function of such a celebration—the chance to temporarily release oneself from ordinary routines and constraints—was deepened by both the maintenance and renewal of African folkways from the era of slavery to the era of gradual abolition. Thus, Pinkster was a valuable cultural resource for the enslaved and helped ensure that African music, spirituality, and even social structure would survive into the nineteenth century, to be adapted for new purposes in a new era.

See also American Revolution; Dance; Festivals; Food; Haitian Revolution; Music; Native Americans and African Americans; New Jersey; New York; New York City; Religion; Resistance; Riots and Rebellions; Slave Trade; and Spirituality.

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