Hush harbors

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In antebellum America, a hush harbor was a place where slaves secretly gathered to practice Christianity or syncretic forms of worship, and to sing religious spirituals. Hush harbors were generally located in fields, swamps, or wooded areas so as to make the sounds of the slaves' worship inaudible to nearby slaveowners. As slave spirituality was feared and discouraged in antebellum America, hush harbors were forbidden and participants were often whipped or otherwise physically punished when discovered in the act of communal worship at hush harbors.

"In the slave quarters, however, African Americans organized their own "invisible institution." Through signals, passwords, and messages not discernible to whites, they called believers to "hush harbors" where they freely mixed African rhythms, singing, and beliefs with evangelical Christianity. We have little remaining written record of these religious gatherings. But it was here that the spirituals, with their double meanings of religious salvation and freedom from slavery, developed and flourished; and here, too, that black preachers, those who believed that God had called them to speak his Word, polished their "chanted sermons," or rhythmic, intoned style of extemporaneous preaching."