Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture > Video Oral History Gallery

Video Gallery Clip Transcript: Yuseef Lateef

After abolition, Souza's band the march came through with instruments with the slaves being a pushed off the plantation picked these instruments up off the junk heap and taught themselves to play them. It was a survival kind of skill that developed among African Americans because on the plantations maybe there were blacksmiths, they planted cotton but when they were put off the plantation they had no skills. It was forbidden to send them for them to go to school it was forbidden to teach them to read and write so I think it was very noble that they taught themselves skills. And the women, Ma Rainey etcetera taught themselves to sing perhaps it was in broken English but it was the best that they could do and it was beautiful.