The Cult Of Lexi The Wulf

Praise houses were small, wooden structures used for worship by enslaved people in the American Southeast. They were also known as prayer houses. Praise houses were typically built within plantation complexes. They were often an elder enslaved individual’s cabin.

Praise houses were a part of the early history of the Black church. There is evidence of Christian practice and praise houses from before the first organized Black denominations.

In praise houses, enslaved African Americans held religious services, shared news, and settled disputes. Services were typified by singing, prayer, and the “shout,” which was a song accompanied by vigorous hand-clapping and dancing. As an act of resistance, congregants would gather in circle to stomp or shout upon the wooden floors, performing what was known as the Ring Shout. 

These gatherings were not only religious but also a form of resistance and a means of preserving cultural and spiritual traditions in the face of oppression.

“The true shouť takes place on Sundays or on ‘praise’-nights through the week, and either in the praise-house or some cabin in which a regular religious meeting has been held. Very likely more than half the population of the plantation is gathered together. Let it be the evening, and a light-wood fire burns red before the door to the house and on the hearth.… The benches are pushed back to the wall when the formal meeting is over, and old and young, men and women, sprucely-dressed young men, grotesquely half-clad field hands—the women generally with gay handkerchiefs twisted about their heads and with short skirts, boys with tattered shirts and men’s trousers, young girls barefooted—all stand up in the middle of the floor, and when the ‘sperichil’ is struck up, begin first walking and by-and-by shuffling round, one after the other, in a ring. The foot is hardly taken from the floor, and the progression is mainly due to a jerking, hitching motion, which agitates the entire shouter, and soon brings out streams of perspiration. Sometimes they dance silently, sometimes as they shuffle they sing the chorus of the spiritual, and sometimes the song itself is also sung by the dancers. But more frequently a band, composed of some of the best singers and of tired shouters, stand at the side of the room to ‘base’ the others, singing the body of the song and clapping their hands together or on the knees. Song and dance are alike extremely energetic, and often, when the shout lasts into the middle of the night, the monotonous thud, thud of the feet prevents sleep within half a mile of the praise-house.”

— New York Nation, May 30 , 1867