Introduction: Women, Slavery, and Historical Research

Author(s): Brenda E. Stevenson

Reviewed work(s):
Source: The Journal of African American History, Vol. 92, No. 1, Women, Slavery, and
Historical Research (Winter, 2007), pp. 1-4
Published by: Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20064149 .
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 INTRODUCTION
WOMEN, SLAVERY, AND
HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Brenda ?. Stevenson*

More than twenty years ago, Deborah Gray White began a serious, fully
documented study of enslaved women in the antebellum South. The eventual
book-length study Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South,
published in 1985, was the first of its kind. It is still one of only a few such
studies. What was, and remains, important about Professor White's work,
however, is not only its status as the "first," but also the quality of her work as a
research monograph. Few pioneering studies have stood the test of time as well
as White's Ar 'n't I a Woman?.
White presents inher brilliantdescriptionof female
Most of thefindingsthat
slave from the lives of enslaved men, the standard focus of
life and its delineation
social of slavery, remain uncontested. Whether
histories it is her analyses of
African American female stereotypes in the public imagination; the central
importance of childbearing, rearing, and socialization to women's sense of self
and their identity as females; the immense importance of their labor in the field
and the domestic sphere; or the social lives, spheres, and networks of these
women; White provides a veritable road map for any future study of enslaved
females.
The to this Special
contributors Issue of The Journal of African American
History salute Deborah
White's enormous contribution by continuing her legacy
of inquiry and excellence in the pursuit of enslaved women's lived experiences.
These essays, including that of Deborah Gray White, are part of a number of
papers given at a commemorative conference that I convened, celebrating the
20th anniversary of the publication of Ar 'n't I a Woman? The conference was
funded by and held at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, inMay
2005.
Deborah Gray White, of course, contributes an essential essay in this
collection?her thoughts on the production of her book. White's "'Matter Out of
Place': Ar'n't I a Woman? Black Female Scholars and the Academy," is an
eloquent explication of the origins of her book, the hostile response from almost
every academic venue, and the toll that this endeavor, and her courageous life as

*Brenda E. Stevenson is Professor of History and Chair of Afro-American Studies at the University of
California, Los Angeles.

1
 2 The Journal ofAfrican American History

an African American female historian of African American females, has taken.

She is, as ever, in this essay honest, bold, and uncompromising in her attempt to
come to terms with the pain, and the pleasure, of being the pioneer, the "matter
out of place," that she is.
Darlene Clark Hine's retrospective essay ''Ar'n't I a Woman?: Female Slaves
in the Plantation South?Twenty Years After" comprehensively recounts the
many thatWhite's
contributions book has made to the historiography of African
Americans, southern history, American social history, and women's history. As
the true "mother" of African American women's history, Professor Hine's
comments are more than celebration. They are testimony to the enormous
importance ofWhite's work as the foundation of much that has followed and that
will come. The other four essays in this Special Issue embrace Professor White's
conclusions as they move on to address some of the questions she explicitly and

implicitly explored inAr 'n't I a Woman?

Daina Ramey Berry's "'In Pressing Need of Cash': Gender, Skill, and
Family Persistence in the Domestic Slave Trade" is an important expansion of
White's discussion of the labor and perceived value of enslaved women. Indeed,
Berry takes up new questions regarding the monetary worth of enslaved females
and the variables, including a female's age, skill, assumed fertility, and general
physical and mental health, along with an owner's financial needs, as well as
market forces, that determine this value. Beginning with the traditional belief that
the domestic slave market centered on the buying and selling of enslaved "prime
men," Berry's meticulous investigation proves otherwise. By canvassing an array
of primary documents representing the Upper and Lower South, Berry is able to
document that female prices, and therefore the value of their labor, were often
equal She also notes that the often drawn conclusion
to those of males. that the

majority of skilled enslaved workers were males is derived from an overly

narrow definition of "skilled." Equally important is Professor Berry's discussion
of the presence of slave families, not just individuals, in the market. Their
presence, and the high market value that these family units commanded,
the belief that the domestic slave trade thrived on the division of
challenge
families and the sale of individuals. Certainly further research in this vein may
have significant impact on our ideas of family and community composition
during the era when the domestic slave trade was at its peak.
While Ramey Berry's essay reassesses
Daina the value of enslaved female
labor and broadens the category of their skilled work, Wilma King's "'Mad'

Enough to Kill: Enslaved Women, Murder, and Southern Courts" explores

another aspect of female work that heavily influenced their market value?their
work as forced concubines and breeders. Indeed, some of the most highly priced
women in the domestic market were"fancy girls" and others whom owners, and
potential owners, expected to exploit sexually. And a female's fertility, as Berry
notes, always was essential in determining her market value, particularly in the
 Introduction?Women, Slavery, and Historical Research 3

last generations before general emancipation when owners actively encouraged

slave reproduction because of the illegality of the Atlantic slave trade.
Focusing primarily on the court cases of Celia and Nelly, Wilma King
reveals that both women were the forced sexual partners of their owners, and
both produced children legally owned by their "fathers." Both also committed
murder: Celia killed her owner; Nelly her child by the "unnamed father." What
King investigates in this compelling comparative study of two young women in
Missouri iswhy Nelly is pardoned, but Celia is hanged. She brings to bear, in this
complex study of enslaved women's place(s) in the economy, culture, and
psychology of the slave societies in which they lived, multiple legal cases?
drawn from diverse southern locales such as Virginia, Mississippi, and
Georgia?of women's
enslaved resistance to sexual exploitation. In so doing,
King exposes the physical and psychic terror (shame, depression, "madness")
present in the lives of slave girls and women derived from the violence of rape.
Margaret Washington's '"From Motives of Delicacy': Sexuality and
Morality in the Narratives of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Jacobs" continues the
discussion of the sexual exploitation of enslaved women as part of their labor
claimed by masters, and the female victims' response. Both King's and
Washington's contributions further the discourse on Deborah Gray White's
notion of young enslaved woman as "Jezebel," each adding nuanced dimensions
that deepen our understanding of the "peculiar" conditions of enslaved female
life.Washington expands the discussion by coupling the experiences of two icons
in enslaved women'shistory: Harriet Jacobs, the most public face of 19th
century sexual exploitation and resistance; and Sojourner Truth, a symbol of
female reform and moral suasion. Washington's insistence thatwe reinsert in the
story of Truth the sexual exploitation that she very likely was compelled to take
out liberates Truth in a profound way, and reattaches her life to the everyday
lives of enslaved women in the South and throughout the African diaspora in the
Americas.

Margaret Washington not only establishes vital consistencies in the enslaved

experiences of Harriet Jacobs and Sojourner Truth, she also examines the
difficulties?personal, professional, and public?that both women faced when
trying to present their stories of enslavement, resistance, and ultimate triumph to
an early 19th-century audience. Clearly, neither could express herself freely?
Jacobs may have been forced to tell too much; Truth, too little.
In the essay "The Question of Slave Female Community and Culture in the
American South: Methodological and Ideological Approaches," I also attempt to
connect enslaved women's common experiences as I explore the origins of their
differences. From what cultures and ethnicities did African women enslaved in
the 18th-century colonial South come? Was their comparative ethnic strength in
the colonies the same as that of themen from the same cultures? And what were
the bases for the development of their communities? White brilliantly explored
4 The Journal ofAfrican American History

female networks in the antebellum South. My essay looks back at the origins of
these networks and communities as it reflects on our ideas of an operative slave

"community" and what that could have meant for the earliest and final
generations of enslaved African and African American women. With this Special
Issue of The Journal of African American History, we recognize and identify
many of the past, present, and future issues surrounding "women, slavery, and
historical research."