Forging Freedom (eBook)

Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2011
288 Seiten
The University of North Carolina Press (Verlag)
978-0-8078-6909-3 (ISBN)

Infos

For black women in antebellum Charleston, freedom was not a static legal category but a fragile and contingent experience. In this deeply researched social history, Amrita Chakrabarti Myers analyzes the ways in which black women in Charleston acquired, defined, and defended their own vision of freedom.Drawing on legislative and judicial materials, probate data, tax lists, church records, family papers, and more, Myers creates detailed portraits of individual women while exploring how black female Charlestonians sought to create a fuller freedom by improving their financial, social, and legal standing. Examining both those who were officially manumitted and those who lived as free persons but lacked official documentation, Myers reveals that free black women filed lawsuits and petitions, acquired property (including slaves), entered into contracts, paid taxes, earned wages, attended schools, and formed familial alliances with wealthy and powerful men, black and white all in an effort to solidify and expand their freedom. Never fully free, black women had to depend on their skills of negotiation in a society dedicated to upholding both slavery and patriarchy. Forging Freedom examines the many ways in which Charlestons black women crafted a freedom of their own design instead of accepting the limited existence imagined for them by white Southerners.

Autor

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers is associate professor of history at Indiana University at Bloomington.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 14.11.2011
• Reihe/Serie: Gender and American Culture
• Reihe/Serie: Gender and American Culture
• Zusatzinfo: 3 illus., 2 maps, 7 tables, notes, bibl., index
• Verlagsort: Chapel Hill
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 160 x 160 mm
• Themenwelt: Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Geschichte / Politik ► Regional- / Landesgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
• Schlagworte: antebellum period race issues • black women in antebellum charleston • black women in the pursuit of freedom • forging freedom in the south • freedom of black women in the south • portraits of women in antebellum charleston
• ISBN-10: 0-8078-6909-0 / 0807869090
• ISBN-13: 978-0-8078-6909-3 / 9780807869093