Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the U.S. slave family are flawed by the neglect of small plantations and export zones and the exaggeration of slave agency. Using data on population trends and slave narratives, Dunaway identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families. These effective strategies include forced labor migrations, structural interference in marriages and childcare, sexual exploitation of women, shortfalls in provision of basic survival needs, and ecological risks. This book is unique in its examination of new threats to family persistence that emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
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"Dunway's attempt to present a comprehensive view of slavery (and freedom) in Appalachia is to be lauded ... Dunway's book breaks new ground." - Appalachian Journal
"Dunaway's volumes raise important questions and give provocative answers about the experience of slavery in nineteenth-century America. In particular, the findings of The African American Family will contribute to the ongoing debate about the nature of slavery on small plantations and farms." - Journal of Interdisciplanary History, Jane Turner Censer
"...impressive..." - Appalachian Heritage
"This book is a valuable contribution to the historiography of antebellum slavery and our understanding of the challenges that African American families faced before, during, and after emancipation.... It is well-researched, engaging, persuasive, and extremely thorough. Dunaway handles her sources, and the subject, with expertise and great sensitivity. She is to be praised for an outstanding and important piece of work." - America Studien/American Studies
"Dunaway's volumes raise important questions and give provocative answers about the experience of slavery in nineteenth-century America. In particular, the findings of The African American Family will contribute to the ongoing debate about the nature of slavery on small plantations and farms." - Journal of Interdisciplanary History, Jane Turner Censer
"...impressive..." - Appalachian Heritage
"This book is a valuable contribution to the historiography of antebellum slavery and our understanding of the challenges that African American families faced before, during, and after emancipation.... It is well-researched, engaging, persuasive, and extremely thorough. Dunaway handles her sources, and the subject, with expertise and great sensitivity. She is to be praised for an outstanding and important piece of work." - America Studien/American Studies
Book Description
Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the U.S. Slave family have been flawed by neglect of small plantations and export zones and exaggeration of slave agency. Using data on population trends and Slave narratives, she identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families, including forced labor migrations, structural interference in marriages and childcare, sexual exploitation of women, shortfalls in provision of basic survival needs, and ecological risks. This book is unique in its examination of new threats to family persistence that emerged during the Civil War and Reconstruction.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Dunaway does a remarkable job of detailing the lives of Appalachian slaves. Full of facts and statistics this book is invaluable to the history student and captivating to the history buff. The author sheds light on the day to day lives of slaves, including marriage practices, truancy, chores and general resistance. Subtle resistance and coping strategies of slaves are included within each chapter. The reader should appreciate the information related specifically to women (and not merely the sexual exploitation aspect)since available information often refers to men or slaves in general. Dunaway's well organized information flows smoothly throught the book making it a good reference source while holding the readers interest as if a novel. As a college student I found this book to be very useful in writing history papers. As a historian it has become one of my favorite books.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
By Tony Thomas
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
If you were a slave woman of past 12 in the Appalachians you had the shortest life expectancy of anyone in the United States. The malnutrition, overwork during and after pregnancy, the intensive breeding to sell your children, and the constant sexual terrorism by white masters, not to speak of the violence regularly rained down on slaves, the unsanitary living and food conditions, and the exposure to noxious industrial, mining, and agricultural biproducts you were subjected to would kill you quicker than any other category in the whole country!
Slavery in Appalachia was worse than slavery anywhere else in the United States, especially for women and children. Dunaway who has build an exhaustive database of information on the economic, social, and political history of Appalachia under slavery, shines her light not only on the family, but the general conditions that African Americans in the Mountain areas faced under slavery and during the years following emancipation. She shatters the myth that slavery was kinder, more gentler in these areas than it was on the big plantations of the cotton, rice, and sugar cane South.
Appalachia had higher concentrations of industrial slavery where slaves were owned or rented out to mines, mills, saltworks, railroads, canals, and other businesses that worked them almost to death, surrounded them with dangerous industrial pollutants and kept them in worse conditions than their mules and horses. Smaller Appalachian rural slave holders often had a lower margin and less resources than Southern plantations to house and feed their slaves, and often used more severe violence and torture to keep their slaves slaves. Moreover in the last three decades of slavery, Appalachian masters got more into the business of breeding slaves for the labor hungry market of the Deep South, forcing slave mothers to have children again and again and again regardless of their health, but sending them back into the fields and mills or to nurse white children when their own children needed their nuturing.
Dunaway makes an important contribution to the general study of slavery and African American history and health by describing the different nutritional needs Africans enslaved in American had as a result of how evolution had bred in biological resistance to tropical health hazards. She explains that these needs along with the harsh work Appalachian and all slaves faced means that their nutritional needs, especially for protein, were grader than average and that attempts to determine slave nutrition based on "average" nutritional needs for the US minimizes the degree of malnutrition among the slaves in general and Appalachian slaves in particular.
Nor did slavery end peacefully in Appalachia. Many areas in the mountains were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation because they were in union-held territory or states that did not secede. Even after the war and after slavery was abolished nationally, Appalachian masters held Black folk in slavery sometimes as much as two years, after they were due their freedom. She also discusses the violence, starvation, and degredation African Americans faced in Appalachia in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation.
Dunaway is a meticulous researcher, a clear analyst, and a quiet good writer. She never tries to dumb down or popularize her work. Yet, she never engages into the obtuse and confused language some academics think is necessary to make a work sound more "theoretical" or scientific.
This book belongs in the homes of anyone concerned with Black, Appalachian, or slave history
Slavery in Appalachia was worse than slavery anywhere else in the United States, especially for women and children. Dunaway who has build an exhaustive database of information on the economic, social, and political history of Appalachia under slavery, shines her light not only on the family, but the general conditions that African Americans in the Mountain areas faced under slavery and during the years following emancipation. She shatters the myth that slavery was kinder, more gentler in these areas than it was on the big plantations of the cotton, rice, and sugar cane South.
Appalachia had higher concentrations of industrial slavery where slaves were owned or rented out to mines, mills, saltworks, railroads, canals, and other businesses that worked them almost to death, surrounded them with dangerous industrial pollutants and kept them in worse conditions than their mules and horses. Smaller Appalachian rural slave holders often had a lower margin and less resources than Southern plantations to house and feed their slaves, and often used more severe violence and torture to keep their slaves slaves. Moreover in the last three decades of slavery, Appalachian masters got more into the business of breeding slaves for the labor hungry market of the Deep South, forcing slave mothers to have children again and again and again regardless of their health, but sending them back into the fields and mills or to nurse white children when their own children needed their nuturing.
Dunaway makes an important contribution to the general study of slavery and African American history and health by describing the different nutritional needs Africans enslaved in American had as a result of how evolution had bred in biological resistance to tropical health hazards. She explains that these needs along with the harsh work Appalachian and all slaves faced means that their nutritional needs, especially for protein, were grader than average and that attempts to determine slave nutrition based on "average" nutritional needs for the US minimizes the degree of malnutrition among the slaves in general and Appalachian slaves in particular.
Nor did slavery end peacefully in Appalachia. Many areas in the mountains were exempted from the Emancipation Proclamation because they were in union-held territory or states that did not secede. Even after the war and after slavery was abolished nationally, Appalachian masters held Black folk in slavery sometimes as much as two years, after they were due their freedom. She also discusses the violence, starvation, and degredation African Americans faced in Appalachia in the immediate aftermath of Emancipation.
Dunaway is a meticulous researcher, a clear analyst, and a quiet good writer. She never tries to dumb down or popularize her work. Yet, she never engages into the obtuse and confused language some academics think is necessary to make a work sound more "theoretical" or scientific.
This book belongs in the homes of anyone concerned with Black, Appalachian, or slave history
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 120
books:
See all 120 books this book cites
5
books
cite this book:
- Without Consent or Contract: The Rise and Fall of American Slavery by Robert William Fogel in Back Matter (1), Back Matter (2), and Back Matter (3)
- First American Frontier: Transition to Capitalism in Southern Appalachia, 1700-1860 (Fred W. Morrison Series in Southern Studies) by Wilma A. Dunaway in Front Matter, Back Matter, and Back Cover
- Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery by Robert William Fogel in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Bond of Iron: Master and Slave at Buffalo Forge by Charles B. Dew in Back Matter (1), and Back Matter (2)
- Atlas of American History by Edward Whiting Fox on page 21, and Back Matter
See all 120 books this book cites
- New Studies in the History of American Slavery by Edward E. Baptist on page 173
- Blacks on the Border: The Black Refugees in British North America, 1815-1860 by Harvey Amani Whitfield in Back Matter
- Pregnancy and Power: A Short History of Reproductive Politics in America by Rickie Solinger in Back Matter
- From Marriage to the Market: The Transformation of Women's Lives and Work by Susan Thistle in Back Matter
- Reconstructing the Fourth Amendment: A History of Search and Seizure, 1789-1868 by Andrew E. Taslitz in Back Matter
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