Chapter 3: The Muffin Man

Heidi Hardin, Chapter 3: The Muffin Man. Tune: Do You Know the Muffin Man?. Tempera on Paper with Mixed Media Collage, 24” x 18”

Racism certainly influenced slavery and the slave trade to a great extent and converted Africans to commodities to be acquired and sold on the world market. Because Africa was hard to circumnavigate, explorers such as Christopher Columbus did not realize what damage he was doing to the African continent by 'discovering' the American Hemisphere. In a relatively short time, the demand for slaves in the 'New World' played havoc with the population patterns and social institutions in western Africa.

(A Mazrui, The Africans)

At Frogmore, a Louisiana Plantation, in 1855, The Quarters housed each African American family in one room in the cabins that lined the slave quarters. The first house in the quarter was the wash house, opposite that was the cookhouse. Heading the quarter was the overseer's house. Other houses at Frogmore included the kitchen, the pigeon house, the smokehouse, the ginning, and bail­ing house, and, of course, the Big House, where William Gillespie greeted his guest on the veranda, a large porch that shaded Gilles­pie's very Big house.
(Leacock and Buckley, Places and Time)

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