In the Shadow of the Baobab Tree: Folktales from the Civil War Era

After long hours of work as camp servants, personal attendants, and battlefield soldiers, Confederate blacks would occasionally gather in the evenings around communal campfires for Brer Rabbit, the quintessential trickster figure in southern African American folklore, and other animal folktale-telling. Regardless of their plantation identification, they knew these humorous folktales taught basic lessons about personal behavior, family interactions, struggles with authority and love and death from an unsentimental reality.  Join Griot Safiya Johnson for this program that re-tells some of those iconic tales, as a means of recognizing an invaluable historic oral tradition amongst southern African Americans, free and enslaved, who participated in the Confederate war effort. Cost: Free with Museum admission.