Grace Hunt

“The former slaves preferred to focus on feeling the power of God's loves, in the tradition of the invisible institution of their parents and grandparents.”
― Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans

“Truly, the colored race are the most cheerful and forgiving people on the face of the earth. That their masters sleep in safety is owing to their superabundance of heart; and yet they look upon their sufferings with less pity than they would bestow on those of a horse or a dog.”
― Harriet Ann Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl

“The separation phase of leaving my previous environment broke my heart; but that breaking is necessary for an individual to be able to connect with what allows them to begin to rebuild.”
― Jamie Lee Finch, You Are Your Own: A Reckoning with the Religious Trauma of Evangelical Christianity

“The desire to read the Bible for themselves - the Bible the slaveholders had so long misrepresented to them- motivated a good many former slaves to seek education.
For Northern teachers, whether white or black, education had a moral purpose. In addition to reading, writing, and arithmetic, they believed schools ought to instill habits of thrift, honesty, punctuality, temperance, and discipline to the ex-slaves, who seemed to be lax about these moral virtues. The former slaves, however, insisted God was not going to punish them for every little sin. For them the essence of religion was not in observing rules and regulations, but in experiencing the power of God's grace within their hearts.”
― Albert J. Raboteau, Canaan Land: A Religious History of African Americans