Dreams

"Once I had a dream," ex-slave Easter Sudie Campbell of Kentucky recalled. In her dream a woman glided by her bed and stood beside the fire. She looked so real, and the dream was so vibrant, that at first Campbell thought it was her daughter arisen from bed in the night to eat from the bean pot—but she realized it was not so, for her daughter was no longer living at home. When she awoke she was certain that she had received a sign of impending death, and was frantic with worry for her daughter. Campbell asked her son to take her to the daughter's home to check on her; the son insisted on going alone, no doubt to save his mother from traveling in the night. He returned after a short while, to report that all was well—but that he had a terrible headache. Before morning, he was dead.

"So you see," Campbell said, years later, "dat war de sign of de dream. I war jes warned in de dream an didn't have sense nuff ter know hit" (Works Progress Administration, Kentucky Narratives, Vol. VII, p. 94).

Many African slaves came from cultures that believed in continual revelation from the spirit world—whether the source of the revelation was a god or an ancestor. These revelations would come either through an entranced medium or, more directly, in the form of a dream. "The other world," historian John Thornton once said, "seems to have found it easiest to communicate with people in an unconscious state or in an altered state of consciousness" (1992, p. 243). These beliefs were not eradicated by their descendents' conversion to Christianity; after all, the Bible is full of such visions, and the two worldviews both seemed quite compatible with the idea of information coming to someone from beyond in the form of dreams (Fairley 2003). In fact, members of the slave community often had very specific interpretations for the images brought to them in their sleep. A few are listed below, taken from a list compiled in the 1930s by Works Progress Administration (WPA) writer Louise Oliphant:

To dream of muddy water, maggots, or fresh meat is a sign of death. To dream of caskets is also a sign of death. You may expect to hear of as many deaths as there are caskets in the dream.

To dream of blood is a sign of trouble.

To dream of fish is a sign of motherhood.

To dream of eggs is a sign of trouble unless the eggs are broken. If the eggs are broken, your troubles are ended.

To dream of snakes is a sign of enemies. If you kill the snakes, you have conquered your enemies.

To dream of fire is a sign of danger.

To dream of a funeral is a sign of a wedding.

To dream of a wedding is a sign of a funeral.

To dream of silver money is a sign of bad luck; cash [is] good luck.

To dream of dead folk is a sign of rain. (Oliphant 1936–1938, Georgia Narratives, vol. 4, part 4, pp. 282-289)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Fairley, Nancy J. "Dreaming Ancestors in Eastern Carolina." Journal of Black Studies 33, no. 5 (May 2003): 545-561.

Oliphant, Louise. Works Progress Administration (WPA) Slave Narratives, 1936–1938, Georgia Narratives, vol. 4, part 4, pp. 282-289.

Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1680. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Works Progress Administration (WPA) Slave Narratives, 1936–1938: Easter Sudie Campbell, Kentucky Narratives, vol. 7, pp. 92-94.

                                     Troy D. Smith