The Pinkster Festival in the 18th Century

The role of the early American urban festival known as the Pinkster has, as Bradford Verter remarks in his essay Interracial Festivity and Power in Albany, New York, been: "...quietly disagreed about...for some years now..." (Major Problems (MP), 93). According to Verter the Pinkster has been viewed as many different things among them a "harmless folkway," a seed of black nationalism, a process of cross-cultural transmission and finally a festival of inversion. Of all of these varied explanations, Verter decries that of a carnival of inversion the most claiming: "Of the various histographical interpretations of Pinkster, least satisfactory is this characterization of the holiday as a carnival of inversion..." (MP, 94). He asserts that Pinkster was a "pan-ethnic celebration... that challenged the settled power of the Federalist merchants who lorded over the local economy and the state government..." (94). While this bold statement by Verter most certainly carries a large measure of truth in it, it is superfluous to assume that all, if any, of the participants of Pinkster were consciously engaged in an "Afrocentric event...which represented the specter of popular democracy and of African American emancipation (MP, 94)." It is more likely that the participants saw Pinkster, not as an idealistic celebration of freedom, but rather simply as an opportunity to engage in otherwise prohibited expressions of their culture, relieve themselves from the physical and psychological rigors of daily life and enjoy the company of their peers.

First, as Verter himself mentions there where various legal measures that were enacted during the eighteenth century designed specifically to keep slaves from engaging large displays of their national culturalism (MP, 97). For example, in 1702, 1723, and 1728 ordinances were passed which forbade slaves from gathering together in groups larger than three without the supervision of their masters (MP 97). Curfews were also a tool used by whites in order to prevent gatherings of blacks. In 1789 Albany passed a city ordinance which charged the cities watchmen to apprehend any blacks found after dark, and in 1793 the Common Council ordered that any slave found on the streets after 9:00 p.m. was to be jailed and fined (MP 98). However, once a year during the festival of Pinkster all these ordinances, laws and rules were suspended, and as an anonymous writer observed the Pinkster "kindles the latent spark of love for his native country and native dance in the bosom of the African" (MP, Anon, 77). Therefore, while in retrospect, because of the unique freedoms enjoyed during the Pinkster by the slaves it certainly could be viewed as an ensign of freedom, but was almost certainly viewed by its actual participants as simply a unique chance to act out normally suppressed cultural traditions.

Along with being an opportunity to act out cultural traditions, Pinkster also undoubtedly served as an outlet through which the physical and psychological rigors of slavery could momentarily be, if not entirely relived, at least lessened. It is hardly necessary to repase here the horrible and tragic nature of slavery and the specific physical and psychological rigors that is imposed upon its most unfortunate victims, rather it suffices us to say that they were heavy and abundant. Pinkster, then, due to legal laxtation previously mentioned, provided one of the few moments in which slaves were free to dance, feast and imagine themselves as Kings. As the Albany Centinel correspondent A.B. remarked about arbors erected for the celebration: "These arbors...are filled with seats, fruit, cakes, cheese, beer and liquors of various kinds" (MP, 77) - the makings of a feast fit for a king. Indeed, as A.B. further states there is even "an old Guinea Negro who is called King Charles" (ibid). Sports are practiced in abundance and "parties collect according to their different tastes to amuse and be amused" (ibid). This desire to amuse and be amused and escape the ugly realities of slavery is undoubtedly more likely to be a main reason for attendance at the Pinkster festival than any desire to make a conscious declaration of democratic protest against the local Federalist government.

Finally, as these "lowly" and "suppressed" participants of the festival gathered together to engage in their cultural traditions and escape the rigors of a particularly arduous life they were also allowed another rarity - the opportunity to associate with friends and family. As demonstrated by Verter slave families were often separated when they were sold: "a 1809 ad offered a female slave "with or without her child" (MP, 97). It was only at festivals, such as Pinkster, that these separated families and friends could see each other and enjoy each other's company. As A.B. notes: "blacks and a certain class of whites, together with children of all countries and colours, begin to assemble on Pinkster Hill collected from every part of the city and adjacent country for many miles around, forming in the whole a motley group of thousands" (MP, 77). It is within this group of thousands that "blacks and a certain class of whites" could meet and mingle with friends and family that they otherwise could not visit.

The fact that they could meet and converse with their peers combined with the fortune of relieving themselves from the harsh rigors of slavery and the occasion to be able to freely express themselves through their cultural traditions verifies the fact that while it may be tempting to look back in history at this multi-cultural event and label it as a "dangerous" "Afrocentric event...[that] intimidated the privileged classes of Albany on many levels...[and] represented the specter of popular democracy and of African American emancipation" (MP, 94), it is far more likely that the Pinkster festival functioned much the same way modern urban festivals and carnivals do. The Pinkster festival was, just as modern parades are, an opportunity to express cultural traditions that are not constantly visible, relieve the stress and austerity of daily life and provide a chance to enjoy the companionship of friends and family. It served, perhaps not as an inversion, in the political sense of the word, but certainly as a diversion, in the literal sense of the word, from the "bleak lives" of the "lower sort" who inhabited, and still in habit, much of urban America.

Works Cited

Anon. A White Observer Deplores the Celebrations of Pinkster in Albany, 1803. Major Problems
in American Urban and Suburban History. Howard P. Chudacoff and Peter C. Baldwin,
Editors. Houghton Mifflin:2005.

Verter, Bradford. Interracial Festivity and Power in Albany, New York. Major Problems in
American Urban and Suburban History. Howard P. Chudacoff and Peter C. Baldwin,
Editors. Houghton Mifflin: 2005.