"All Dye Together" in The Florida Negro Florida Writers' Project Transcription, encoding and edition Noah Dancu Edition Laura Heffernan Edition Tru Leverette Edition Clayton McCarl

This document was produced as part of the Viola Muse Digital Edition (violamuse.unfdhi.org), based at the University of North Florida.

 USA Florida Jacksonville fn-31 The section "All Dye Together" found on p. 31 of the manuscript copy of The Florida Negro housed in the State Archives of Florida (S1585) and available through the Florida Memory website of the State Library and Archives of Florida. This text contains material that may be based, in part, on a statement in the Lindsday Moore Narrative

Handwritten on one side of a single sheet of unruled writing paper, with damage around edges

Document transcribed and encoded following the criteria of the Viola Muse Digital Edition (violamuse.unfdhi.org), based at the University of North Florida.

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All Dye Together

Both mistress and maid during Florida's slave period had a taste for gay color in dress. Cloth was made on many plantations by the woman with the help of those children too young to work in the fields.This affirmation may be based partly on a statement in the Lindsay Moore Narrative: "Lindsay escaped much of the farm work on the Overtree place by learning to skillfully assist the women who made cloth out of the cotton from the fields. He grew very fast at cleaning 'rods,' clearing the looms and other operations. When, at thirteen, it became time for him to pick cotton, he had become so fast at helping with spinning and weighing the cotton that others had picked that he almost entirely escaped the picking himself" (2).

This white cotton cloth could be dyed in a number of ways. The indigo plant, once grown here commercially, is still found in a wild state and provid–ed blue coloring;. theThe poke berry gave a desirable red. Oak bark provided vary–ing shades of brown and the walnut an ineradicable dark brown.

On some plantations, where the owners gave the women a white cotton dress once or twice a year, this method of coloring was effectively used to afford the slave woman a gay change of dress for her infrequent trips to "meetin'.".

However, the dress of the slaves was not generally colorful;. theThe men wore simple pants and shirt, both coarse;. theThe women wore tight bodices and full gathered skirts; those were the days of half a dozen petticoats. Occasionally a slave was the proud possessor of her mistress' discarded hoop skirt, but this was the exception. Hoops were expensive, but grape vines and bamboo served for home–madehomemade hoops of mistress as well as slaves.