Negro Cloth

Colonial South Carolina’s Slave Codes were extensive, regulating every aspect of an enslaved person’s life. The Slave Codes’ details make this clear. Consider, for instance, the 1735 Slave Codes’ determination about what enslaved persons could wear. The enslaved had the government’s permission to dress in:

Negro cloth, duffelds, coarse kearsies, osnabrigs, blue linen, checked linen or coarse garlix or calicoes, checked cottons, or scotch plaids, not exceeding ten shillings per yard for the said checked cottons, scotch plaids, glarix or calico…

The colonial government didn’t simply prohibit the enslaved from wearing certain clothing; it specified precisely what kinds of clothes enslaved Blacks could wear. Textures, materials, colors, patterns, and costs—the 1735 Slave Code detailed each aspect of legal “Negro cloth.” Thus, what the enslaved wore testified to how rigorous South Carolina’s lawmakers were in codifying complete Black subjugation into law.

These colonial lawmakers were also ruthless in ensuring that enslaved Blacks who transgressed their laws suffered. Consider again the sphere of clothing. The 1735 Slave Code pronounced that any enslaved person who wore clothing “above” negro cloth could have their clothes taken by “all and every constable and other persons.” It was lawful to forcefully disrobe enslaved Blacks whose clothes didn’t comport with the slavocracy’s totalizing white hegemony.