Forging Freedom

Black Women and the Pursuit of Liberty in Antebellum Charleston

Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

288 Seiten

2011 | New edition
The University of North Carolina Press (Verlag)
978-0-8078-3505-0 (ISBN)

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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 Charleston's black women crafted a freedom of their own design instead of accepting the limited existence imagined for them by white Southerners. |In this deeply researched social history, 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.

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

Reihe/Serie	Gender and American Culture
Verlagsort	Chapel Hill
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 235 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
ISBN-10	0-8078-3505-6 / 0807835056
ISBN-13	978-0-8078-3505-0 / 9780807835050
Zustand	Neuware