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A DREAM THAT RESTS HEAVY ON YOUR MIND
Dream, Visions and Signs in Slave Narratives Collected for the WPA
By Wanda Easter Burch

Between 1936 and 1938, more than 2,300 first person accounts of slavery were collected as part of the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA). The interviewers used a standardized set of questions designed to mine the memory of former slaves, most of them in their 70s or 80s at the time they were interviewed.  They were asked about dreams and visions and “signs”. There are relatively few lengthy dream reports among the narratives, perhaps because of the general way the questions were asked. An interesting feature of the narratives is that the former slaves do not draw strong distinctions between dreams and “signs”; they received messages in the dream world, and from the world around them. The most important messages often involved contact with the dead and glimpses of the future.

Signs, alongside dreams and visions, were “the way the Lord has of showing you things.” In an earlier research project by Fisk University, ex-slaves reported traditional ways of reading both. An anonymous informant said, with assurance, that if you dreamed of losing a tooth, something was going to happen, some of your “kinfolk” or close friends would get into trouble or die. She recalled that she lay down to sleep, dreamed about losing a tooth and the next morning heard that the lady up the street had died suddenly. She also equated ringing in the ears as being the sign of someone dying. Several former slaves, once again unnamed, recalled dreams being important to their grandmothers, one noting that her “grandma say don’t never tell your dream before breakfast, if you do, it won’t come true”  - but she claimed not to believe in dreams herself because she was “too busy working”.[1]

What follows is a sampling from the WPA collection. Dialect renditions by the transcribers have been removed or minimized:

* Ophelia Jemison dreamed of the dead. “The spirits of the dead are with you when you sleep if you dream about them”, she said.  “Spirit wants to tell you something so, “just set yourself in mind for something” and that will help you “weather the storm.” She dreamed of her long dead mother, sitting in the doorway. Her mother asked if she were happy and then she disappeared. Ophelia “studied about that dream” the entire next day, fearing something was about to happen, and then the next day she dreamed again. This time Death stood in the same door where her mother stood the night before. Death disappeared; someone banged on the door and told her that her husband had been “knocked down dead.” Ophelia ended her story with a caution: “A dream that rests heavy on your mind is a visitation of the spirit. Look on it with concern.”[2]  

* Annie Burton, born in 1858, gained her freedom but remained in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, where she had been in service. She dreamed her sweetheart died suddenly. Invited out to tea the night before she was to leave her current paid service, she told her boyfriend the dream after he told her he had purchased a piece of poplar wood to make a table for their new home. “Don't let that trouble you, there is nothing in dreams,” he said, “But one month from that day he died, and his coffin was made from the piece of poplar wood he had bought for the table.”[3]  

* Malindy Maxwell was born a slave. She told of dreaming death, of folks on the farm getting “happy” and “shouting” when they “got religion and recalled an often repeated story by her mistress that she had been born “foot foremost” with a “veil on my face and down on my body a piece...a caul.” For that reason she would see forms and they would vanish. She was now 80 years old and could only see those forms out of one eye, but she had always seen things “like when you are dreaming at night but I see them at times that plain in day.”[4]

* The “Lord” would visit Maggie Perkins when her “folks were going to die.” Just before her grandmother’s death, she woke up and told her aunt that “granma was dead.” Her aunt accused her of lying but she indeed saw her grandmother’s death. Then she saw another aunt lying on the bed with her hand under her jaw, smiling to a house full of people. That aunt died and then they “paid attention” to Maggie’s visions when she told them someone was going to die.[5]

* Several unnamed former slaves recalled dreams being important to their grandmothers, one noting that her “grandma say don’t never tell your dream before breakfast, if you do, it won’t come true,” (a tradition familiar to me when I was growing up in rural Alabama); but she claimed not to believe in dreams herself because she was too busy working.[6]

* Dreaming could be dangerous. One report noted that a slave didn’t share dreams or visions of Abraham Lincoln. If they had such dreams, they would gather in the woods and talk alone about those. A young slave named Charlotte had such a dream, told her dream and was nearly beaten to death.[7]

Religious “visions” were reported with more fervor than night dreams. Visions had a palpable presence that awed and inspired and these people - born into acceptance of signs, second sight and accustomed to spiritual trance as a pathway to crossing the thin boundary between waking and ordinary reality - did not hesitate to describe their  visioning as a path to acceptance of Christianity, a refuge from their hard, often brutal, life as slaves. A developing hybrid African-American form of Christianity that blended Christian ritual and belief with elements of West African culture resulted in a distinctive worship characterized by singing, dancing, “shouting,” and spiritual possession performed in secret prayer meetings held on plantation grounds, where slave-owners sent mixed messages of Christianizing the slaves while at the same time living in fear of the freedom inherent in religious expression.

The slaves avowed their acceptance of the Christian Lord in meetings in grove shelters on the plantations but, as much as possible, kept their visions to themselves, only sharing the experiences in secret prayer meetings where an attempt was made to stifle “shouts” by a device brought from Africa:  turning a pot down to capture the sound. A former slave identified as “Mrs. Sutton” described the process turning down the kettle:  “They would get a big ole wash kettle and put it right outside the door, and turn it bottom upwards to get the sound, then they would go in the house and sing and pray, and the kettle would catch the sound. I suppose they would kinda have it propped up so the sound would get under it.”

Hearing voices was common – even expected.  You really didn’t have religion until you had experienced direct communication with the Spirit in some form. One former slave tried to get religion beginning in 1866 but, even in a revival, just couldn’t do it until he went alone and sat under a peach tree where he prayed till midnight. Then he heard a voice: “you rise, you rise.” He ran into the house and still heard the voice. Realizing he was hearing the voice of a holy spirit, he ran into the woods naked, crying, and happy – religion had come to him “like the wind blows.” After that he could talk to all God’s creatures, from the ants to the birds. Another man reported seeing things when he got religion but never heard anything. He saw the Lord open a cloud and look down on his heart:  “He took it out and put it right back in my body. I never have heard nobody say nothing, though. He looked just like you see him in these pictures. Long white robe and long hair and beard.”[8]