the who built america?

materials
Doing As They Can and nine other documentaries are a part of the Who Built America? series, which
explores the central role working women and men played in key events and developments of American
History. See also the two-volume Who Built America? textbook, Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution, a high
school text on the Civil War and Reconstruction, and the WBA? interactive CD-ROM.

Complete list of WBA? documentaries:

History: The Big H— This film-noir detective story introduces the history of working people and the challenge of
understanding the past.

Tea Party Etiquette— Boston shoemaker George Robert Twelves Hewes narrates his
experience of the Boston Tea Party, Boston Massacre, and the American Revolution.

Daughters of Free Men— Lucy Hall leaves her New England farm to work in the
Lowell textile mills of the 1830s and confronts a new world of opportunity and
exploitation.

Five Points— The story of 1850s New York City and its notorious immigrant slum
district, the Five Points, is seen through the conflicting perspectives of a native
born Protestant reformer and an Irish-Catholic family.

Doing As They Can— A fugitive woman slave describes her life, work, and day-to-
day resistance on a North Carolina cotton plantation during the 1840s and 1850s.

Dr. Toer’s Amazing Magic Lantern Show— The struggle to realize the promise
of freedom following the Civil War is told by ex-slave J.W. Toer and his traveling
picture show.

1877: The Grand Army of Starvation— In the summer of 1877 eighty thousand
railroad workers went on strike and hundreds of thousands soon followed. The
Great Uprising began a new era of conflict about equality in the industrial age.

Savage Acts: Wars, Fairs and Empire— The story of the Philippine War (1899-
1902) and turn-of-the-century world’s fairs reveal the links between everyday
life in the U.S. and the creation of a new expansionist foreign policy.

Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl— Framed by the 1909 New York shirtwaist strike, this program
presents a panoramic portrait of immigrant working women in the turn-of-the-century city.

Up South: African-American Migration in the Era of the Great War — Narrated by a Mississippi barber
and a sharecropper woman, Up South tells the dramatic story of African-American migration to industrial
cities during World War I.
 w h a t wa s i t l i k e to grow u p
a s a s l av e ?
I n the years before the Civil War, millions of black
men, women, and children in the American South
lived their lives as slaves. What did it mean to be
within the rigid confines of slavery, African Ameri-
cans struggled to assert their humanity. Through reli-
gion, music, daily resistance, and especially the family,
enslaved? How did slavery affect the way people slaves sought a measure of independence and dignity.
worked? The way they raised children? How did Doing As They Can explores the world of slavery from
they feel about being slaves? How did slavery, and the slaves’ point of view. It draws on the testimony
the work that slaves performed, change over time? African Americans left in memoirs, letters, and inter-
Slavery placed harsh limits on the lives of black views conducted after Emancipation. These first-hand
men and women. Slaves had to do any work the mas- accounts help us envision the slave community—a
ter ordered. Masters were free to punish their slaves world that neither southern nor northern whites ever
and sell them away from family and friends. Yet even fully understood.

?
Is this what
you think of
when you
think of
slavery?
What are
your images
of slave life?

“Five generations on Smith’s plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina.”

This African-American family was photographed in 1862.
Photographs of slaves are rare. Most of the images used in this program are engravings printed in
books and magazines of the period. Some of them present racial stereotypes. (See page 12)

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

1
 I N T H E B E G I N N I NG
T here were no slaves on the first English ships
to reach North America in 1607. Yet by 1860,
there were four million African-American slaves
sands of African women, men, and children were
brought to America and sold as slaves.
In their homelands, Africans had been farmers
in the United States. Between settlement and the and cattleraisers, hunters and traders, skilled weav-
Civil War, a cruel system of unfree, unpaid labor ers and ironmakers. Others were musicians, priests,
developed in one of the most democratic societies and poets. Captured and taken across the sea, they
in the world. brought with them a host of languages, religions,
Africans were first brought to Virginia in 1619. and cultures. Though much was lost, slaves adapt-
By then, African slaves were already working the ed African traditions to life in America. By 1776, a
mines and sugar cane fields of the Caribbean and distinct African-American culture had emerged.
South America. As the slave trade developed in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the exchange ““The stench of the hold was loathsome. . .
of people and goods across the Atlantic shaped the The ship was so crowded that each scarcely
had room to turn himself. . . This wretched
“New World” societies in the Caribbean and the
situation was aggravated by the galling of
Americas. In North America, Africans were first the chains and the filth. . . The shrieks of the
sold as indentured servants, who might earn their women and the groans of the dying rendered
freedom with seven years of unpaid labor. Afri- the whole a scene of horror. . .”
can and white indentured servants grew tobacco ­—EX-SLAVE OLAUDAH EQUIANO, 1789
for the first Virginia planters and made up a major
portion of the workforce.
By 1700 the southern colonies were expanding. When the American Revolution began, there were
As health conditions improved in the colonies and almost half a million slaves in the thirteen colonies.
indentured servants lived long enough to claim land During the war, 5,000 slaves joined the Revolution-
and demand rights as citizens, tensions emerged ary forces in a bid for their freedom. Thousands of
between the wealthy settlers and the growing num- others fought for the British, who also offered lib-
ber of freed servants. White indentured servants erty in exchange for military service. As many as
became more scarce, and planters turned to slavery 50,000 slaves seized the opportunity to run away.
to solve both their labor problem and the tensions After the Revolution, the Founding Fathers not
between the wealthy and poor. Planters used Afri- only failed to end slavery, they actually strength-
cans’ black skin and non-Christian religion to justify ened it. The Constitution protected the importation
lifetime bondage and codified racial difference and of new slaves until 1808. And it promised that fed-
race-based slavery by passing a series of laws that eral armed forces would put down slave rebellions.
regulated slavery. During the next century, thou- White liberty and black slavery were etched into

The Middle Passage.

Africans crossed the Atlantic squeezed into the cargo holds of slave traders’ ships. Sometimes more than half died before the voyage was over.

Thomas Clarkson, The History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the African Slave-Trade by the British Parliament (1808)

2
the highest law of the land.
After the Revolution the northern colonies instituted
Africans first 1619
gradual abolition of slavery—slowly reducing the slave brought to Virginia
population from fifty thousand in 1775 to twenty-seven
thousand in 1810 until the last slave was freed in the
North in 1847. Most slaves in the North worked in cities 1620 Pilgrims land
at Plymouth
as laborers or domestic servants. Slaves made up eighteen
percent of New York City’s population with perhaps half Bacon’s Rebellion— 1676
of the city’s households owning a slave by the 1740s. Free black and white
black communities thrived throughout the North, estab- servants battle planter
lishing churches, schools, anti-slavery organizations, and elite
voluntary associations.
1739 Stono Slave
Rebellion

American 1776
Revolution begins

1793 Eli Whitney

invents
the cotton
gin—cotton
plantations
spread

Nat Turner Rebellion 1831

1833 American Anti-

slavery Society
founded

Lowell textile 1835

mills flourish

1848 U.S. wins

Mexican-American
War—slavery
spreads westward

Harriet Tubman 1849

escapes slavery

1850 Fugitive Slave Act

Civil War begins 1861

Advertising a slave sale.

This handbill announcing an auction of African captives was posted around the
city of Charleston in 1769.

American Antiquarian Society

3
 K I NG COT TO N
“The master fed us reg’lar on good, ‘stantial
food just like you’d tend to your horse, if you
had a real good one.”
­—ANONYMOUS EX-SLAVE

T he rise of English textile mills

and the growth of a worldwide
textile market in the 1790s sparked
the expansion of the slave system.
At the same time, Eli Whitney’s cot-
ton gin, invented in 1793, efficiently
removed seeds from the cotton boll,
speeding production. Cotton became
king, and slavery grew more profit-
able. Between 1800 and 1860 cotton
plantations and slavery spread west
to Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas.
Changes in the demand for cot-
ton directly affected slaves’ lives.
When high demand raised the price
of cotton, planters cultivated more King Cotton.
land and worked slaves harder than The South’s staple, packed into bales and awaiting transport

ever. Yet high demand (and the end

up the Mississippi River, filled a New Orleans wharf.

of slave importation) also increased the price of slaves, encouraging Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

masters to improve slaves’ living conditions. When demand tapered

off and cotton prices fell, the planter’s economic difficulties could mean
hard times and sale for slaves.
By 1860 the American South produced two thirds of the world’s cot-
ton. Cotton and slavery brought great wealth to large planters. Slav-
ery also benefited northerners who shipped cotton to England or made
loans to planters buying slaves and land. Profits from such transactions
helped finance the building of the first factories in the North. With a
steady stream of cotton from the South, cotton mills in Lowell, Mas-
sachusetts and Rhode Island expanded and began employing young
women and new immigrants and in turn increased the demand for
slave-produced cotton. (see Daughters of Free Men viewer’s guide)

4
 SOUTHERN SOCIET Y
A t the top of southern society was a tiny group
of planters who owned 50 or more slaves. Ste-
phen Duncan, the richest man in the South, owned
over 1,000 slaves in 1860. From the ranks of the big
planters came several presidents and many con-
gressmen. Below them on the social ladder was a
much larger group of slaveowners who owned be-
tween 10 and 20 slaves. Any family owning even
one slave had a valuable asset.
Most white families, however, did not own even
one slave. The majority of white southerners lived
on small, family-operated farms, much like those in
the North. Though they did not benefit from slavery,
most non-slaveowning whites supported the slave The “Big House.”
This image of the main residence at Oak Lawn, a Louisiana sugar plantation, illustrates
system. Belief in white supremacy was so wide- how owners of large plantations created a world of luxury and aristocratic style.
spread that even the poorest whites felt they had a
stake in the system’s preservation. Source: C. E. H. Bonwill, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, February 6, 1864

Slaveowners worked together to ensure the sur-

vival of the “peculiar institution.” Wealthy plant- ety based on racial equality.
ers made the laws that protected their right to own Throughout the South, but especially in the upper
slaves, to sell them, and to discipline them with the South, slaves who had been freed by their owners
whip. Poor white farmers manned the patrols that or were able to purchase their freedom worked as
searched for runaways. Few southern whites op- laborers, artisans, small shopkeepers or domestics.
posed slavery, and even fewer could envision a soci- Most of these free blacks lived in urban areas, and
women generally outnum-
bered men. By the 1830s in
the aftermath of Nat Turn-
er’s rebellion, whites passed
laws restricting the rights of
free blacks and making in-
dividual emancipation more
difficult.

? Night patrols
enforced planter
control even after
work hours and
searched for
runaways. Why did
poor southern
whites help keep
blacks enslaved?
Night Patrol.
This scene of white patrollers examining “Negro passes” in Louisiana illustrates the constraints placed on all African
Americans in the slave South.

5
Detail of a wood engraving based on a sketch by Frank H. Schell, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, July 11, 1863
 F RO M DAW N TO D U S K

T
day
he slaves’
working
began
“About the first of July. . . (the cotton) is hoed. . . The overseer
follows the slaves on horseback with a whip. The fastest hoer
splitting fence
rails, slaughtering
hogs, and clear-
takes the lead row. . . If one falls behind or is a moment idle, he
at dawn and is whipped.” ing land.
lasted into the —SOLOMON NORTHUP, TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, 1855 Roughly one
night. Most quarter of all
slaves—men, slaves did not
women, and even older children—spent 12 to 15 work the land. A few female slaves worked at the
hours a day plowing, planting, hoeing, or picking beck and call of mistresses, doing such tasks as wash-
in the fields. Though conditions varied, this back- ing clothes, cleaning, cooking, and personal service.
breaking labor was usually done in large gangs, This work could be so difficult and isolating that
supervised by white overseers. many women preferred to work in the fields with
Fieldwork varied with the crop. Sugar fields, like their families. Ten percent of all slaves worked in in-
cotton fields, were worked in gangs. But rice planting, dustries like lumbering, road construction, or mining,
which required skilled labor, was done by individu- often because their masters hired them out to perform
als with specific tasks to perform. The exhausting field such work. In southern cities, a few slaves worked as
work of the summer and fall contrasted with the slow- skilled artisans, such as blacksmiths.
er paced winter and spring tasks of chopping wood,

Working in the Fields.

An unknown photographer captured this scene of men, women, and children picking cotton under the watchful eye of an overseer.

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

6
 M A S T E R ’ S T I M E , S L AV E S ’ T I M E
A fter a day’s work, slaves returned
to their quarters, where there
were meals to prepare, clothes to wash
and mend, and children to put to bed.
Slaves viewed time away from the
fields as their own and resisted mas-
ters’ attempts to supervise life in the
quarters. Here, slaves cemented the
family and community ties that helped
them endure under slavery.
To some degree, slaves were able
to decide who did what in the quar-
ters. Often their division of chores was
made according to gender. This sexual
division of labor contrasted with the
master’s effort to make male and fe-
male slaves do the same work. To the
extent that work in the quarters or in
one’s own garden was done according
to slaves’ own rules, it provided them The cabins comprising the slave quarters on the Drayton Plantation, Hilton Head, South Carolina.
Photographed in 1862.
with a measure of control over their
lives. Slaves also recalled African tradi- Pictures and Photographs Division, Library of Congress
tions in their marriage rituals, language, songs, and Slaves mixed Christian and African beliefs to form
games. They voiced their hopes, and fears, in beauti- a religion that had little to do with the masters’ faith.
ful spirituals, creating a rich African-American musi- Masters tried to use Christianity and the New Testa-
cal tradition. Even slave kinship patterns had Afri- ment to make slaves obedient and to justify slavery.
can roots. For example, like their African ancestors, But slaves focused instead on Old Testament refer-
slaves did not marry their first cousins, as did many ences to freedom, escape from slavery, revenge, and
white southerners. justice.

“Ration Day.”
A master distributed provisions in this illustration from a weekly newspaper report about the operations of a plantation around 1860. The engraving suggests
that this planter provided his slaves with a varied and nutritious diet, which was not typically the case. Slaves used gardens and other methods to supplement
often meager or boring fare.

Harper’s Weekly
7
 “SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE A
M OT H E R L E S S CH I L D ”
N o matter how successful slaves were at gaining some au-
tonomy, they remained slaves. No one could forget that
fact. One constant reminder was the slave sale. In the words
of one woman who had been sold away from her husband,
“White folks got a heap to answer for the way they’ve done to
colored folks! So much they wouldn’t never pray it away!”
As slavery expanded after 1800, tens of thousands of black
men, women, and children were torn from their families and
sold to new masters in the West. Migrating masters who took
their slaves with them also broke up families, since husbands
and wives often belonged to different masters. Some slaves were
sold away from their families as a form of punishment. In these
and other ways, masters broke up as many as one third of all
slave marriages.
Trying to preserve a sense of family continuity, slaves devel-
oped an elaborate system of naming their children. Through the
assignment of first names, slaves honored dead relatives and cre-
ated a mechanism through which kin could be traced over sev-
eral generations. Other slaves took names such as Freeman to
deny their assigned status as property.

Slaves for Sale.

The twenty-three slaves to be sold belonged to a Kentucky
planter, John Carter, who decided to “liquidate his assets”
before moving to the free state of Indiana.

John Winston Coleman, Slavery Times in Kentucky (1940)

“All the threats of the slave

dealer could not silence the
afflicted mother. She kept on
begging them not to separate
the three . . . But it was on
no avail. Then Eliza ran to
[her son]. . . kissed him
again and again, told him
to remember her—all the
while her tears falling in the
boy’s face like rain.”

—SOLOMON NORTHUP,
TWELVE YEARS A SLAVE, 1855

On the Auction Block.

This engraving depicts an auction of what appears to be a slave family rather than the
wrenching scene of family separation that frequently occurred during slave sales.

“A slave auction in Virginia,” Illustrated London News, February 16, 1861

8
 S L AV E R E B E L L I O N S

Turner Rebellion.
This woodcut was published in an 1831 account of the slave uprising.

Samuel Warner, Authentic and impartial narrative of the tragical scene which was witnessed in Southampton County (Virginia) . . . (New York, 1831)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

A gain and again, slaves fought against great odds to over

throw their masters. Slave rebellions, big and small, oc-
curred regularly beginning in the seventeenth century. The
It was slavery I hated . . .
Feeding and clothing me could
not atone for taking my
most successful slave uprising occurred in Saint Domingue, Liberty away.”
where slaves overthrew French colonial rule and established
their own nation, Haiti, the first independent black state in the — FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
Americas. In 1831, Nat Turner led dozens of Virginia slaves in MY BONDAGE AND
MY FREEDOM, 1855
a religiously inspired rebellion against whites.
For two days in August 1831, Turner and a band of followers
went from plantation to plantation, killing whites and freeing
slaves. Nearly 60 whites died before troops dispersed Turner’s
band. Within weeks white authorities rounded up and executed
over one hundred slaves, including many who had not taken
part in the rebellion. Many more were punished. Turner him-
self died on the gallows still thoroughly convinced that God ap-
proved his actions.
After the rebellion, masters took new steps to defend slavery.
Southern states passed new laws limiting slaves’ ability to move
about on their own. Teaching a slave to read or write became
a crime. Feeling threatened, planters no longer allowed public
criticism of slavery. Southern leaders, who had once spoken of
slavery as a “necessary evil” now began to describe and defend
it as an ideal social system, a “positive good.”

A map of servitude.
The back of a Louisiana slave named Gordon, photographed in 1863 after he
escaped to the Union forces.

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

9
 DAY TO DAY R E S I S TA NC E

F or thirty years following Nat Turner’s death, slaves did

not rise up in a mass revolt. But they did resist in other
ways. The slave song “You May Think I’m Working/But I’m
Not” described the most common form of resistance. Faking
illness or ignorance was another way to lighten one’s load.
Slaves also practiced sabotage. They broke tools, destroyed
livestock, and set fires. Some slaves also poisoned their masters.
Running away was another form of resistance. In the eigh-
teenth and early nineteenth centuries, escaped slaves often
found refuge with nearby Native American tribes. Since it
was difficult and dangerous, and meant leaving behind family
members, most runaways were young, single men. Most came
from such border states as Virginia and Kentucky, where the es-
cape route of safe houses and abolitionist sympathizers known as
“the Underground Railroad” began.
The most famous “conductor” on the Underground Railroad
was Harriet Tubman. After fleeing her Maryland master in 1849,
Tubman returned twice to lead her two children, sister, mother,
and brother and his family to freedom. In later trips, she helped
as many as 300 African Americans to escape slavery.
Escape.
In the 1830s, this icon, or symbol, appeared on
notices about fugitive slaves in the classified
section of the Mobile, Alabama,
Commercial Register.

Richard Brough, Commercial Advertiser, June 16, 1832

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

Successful runaways faced new hardships in the

North. Black men and women such as Harriet Jacobs
(the runaway whose story served as the basis for
much of Doing As They Can) found that jobs and hous-
ing were segregated in the North. In 1850, the Fugi-
tive Slave Law empowered the federal government
to seize runaway slaves in the North and return them
to their southern masters, and to punish northerners
who aided escaped slaves.

Sounding the Alarm.

Recapture in the North because of the Fugitive Slave Law was a
dreadful end to the ordeal of escaping from slavery, and north-
ern African-American communities were as vigilant as possible.

Boston Public Library

10
 LET MY PEOPLE GO!

Conflict over Abolition.

Abolitionists were the targets of violence, such as this
attack on an anti-slavery meeting in Boston,
Massachusetts, in December 1860.

Harper’s Weekly, December 15, 1860

E scaped slaves and other free northern African

Americans knew they would not be safe until
slavery was abolished. Among the many black men
being themselves reduced to slavery. This fear deep-
ened after 1840, as slave plantations appeared in the
new territories in the West. Whether new states would
and women who devoted their lives to abolition were be free or slave became the dominant political issue of
Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass. Black abo- these decades. By 1860, many northerners no longer
litionists were joined by a group of white northern- believed that slavery and free labor could exist in the
ers with deep religious and humanitarian objections same country.
to slavery. On the eve of the Civil War, America was a deeply
At first abolitionists were seen as radicals, and only divided nation. On one side stood slaveowners who
a few whites took this brave stand. Gradually, how- profited from the expansion of slavery and cotton cul-
ever, more white northerners, especially working men tivation. On the other were slaves who wanted to be
and women, came to view the slave system as a threat free. And beside them stood those northerners who felt
to their own futures. their own freedom threatened by the slave system. The
Free wage laborers had long expressed the fear of lines of an irrepressible conflict had been drawn.

“Assault of the Second Louisiana (Colored) Regiment on the Confederate works at Port Hudson, May 27, 1863.”
After initial resistance to their inclusion, African-American soldiers fought bravely for the Union forces, as depicted in this 1863 illustration from a weekly newspaper.

Detail of wood engraving based on a sketch by Frank H. Schell, Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, June 27, 1863

11
 S E E I NG I S B E L I E V I NG ?

Many illustrations represented the master’s view of slavery. Such pictures often portrayed slaves’ lives as carefree. Slaves were shown as children, while masters were depicted as the
loving adults of the plantation family.

“The Old Plantation Home,” Currier and Ives, 1872, lithograph, 9 x 12 1/2 inches—Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

T hough photographs of slaves are rare, many

paintings and drawings of slaves have survived.
These illustrations, including those used in Doing As
tations of slavery? Contemporary pictures rarely de-
picted life in the slave quarters, slaves’ family life, or
slaves’ day-to-day resistance to white control. Perhaps
They Can, can help us envision slave life. But we must slaves drew such pictures, but if they did, their pic-
treat such pictures with care. None of the surviving tures have not survived. When we look at pictures of
illustrations was created by slaves themselves. slave life we have to think carefully about who drew
What’s missing from most of these visual interpre- them, what they were trying to show, and what they
left out.

Abolitionists criticized slavery, yet the graphics printed

in their publications often distorted the slave experience.
Their pictures showed slaves as brutalized victims and
focused on whippings, slave sales, and other extreme
forms of exploitation.

Illustrations of the American

Anti-Slavery Almanac for 1840 (New York, 1839)
Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress

12
 LEARN MORE ABOUT DOING AS THEY CAN
Ira Berlin et al., eds., Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk about
CREDITS
Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom (The New Press, 1998). Doing As They Can
This book and tape set present powerful personal stories about slavery
Documentary
taken from interviews with former slaves conducted in the 1930s. These
interviews are also available online at Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from Written by:
the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938 (http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/ Joshua Brown
snhtml/snhome.html) Art Director:
Joshua Brown
American Social History Project, Freedom’s Unfinished Revolution: An
Inquiry into the Civil War and Reconstruction (The New Press, 1996). Additional Art:
Josh Brown
Designed for high school students and teachers, this textbook includes
pre-reading exercises, short narrative sections, large numbers of primary Picture Research:
documents and images, and suggestions for classroom activities. Bret Eynon
Historical Consultant:
Freedmen and Southern Society Project, eds., Free at Last: A Documentary Herbert G. Gutman
History of Slavery, Freedom, and the Civil War (The New Press, 1992).
Original Music:
These documents reveal the active role of slaves and former slaves
Jane Ira Bloom
in escaping slavery, aiding the Union cause as laborers and soldiers,
transforming the war for the Union into a war against slavery, and giving Sound:
meaning to their newly won freedom in a nation wracked by warfare and Charles Potter,
Radio Arts Productions
political upheaval.
Executive Producer:
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North Stephen Brier
America (Harvard University Press, 1998).
This comprehensive book traces the story of slavery from the original
Viewer’s Guide
colonies in the years before cotton production predominated to its end Written by:
in the 1860s and demonstrates the ways in which the meaning of slavery Dorothy Fennell
and of race itself were continually renegotiated and redefined.
Edited by:
Michael A. Gomez, Exchanging Our Country Marks: The Transformation of Bret Eynon
African Identities in the Colonial and Antebellum South (University of North Ellen Noonan
Carolina Press, 1998). Designed by:
Gomez traces the process (largely complete by 1830) by which enslaved Marie Murphy,
Africans began to see themselves as a different people entirely — part of a Michele James
homogenous group bound by slavery rather than separated by language
or culture in Africa. ASHP would also like
to thank the following
instituions for providing
Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I A Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation the photographs and
South (revised edition, W.W. Norton and Company, 1999; first ed. 1985). engravings used in this
This book refutes common stereotypes about African-American female program: Columbia
slaves and delves into female slave networks, family life, reproduction, University; the Library of
and the specific and unique difficulties and pressures experienced by Congress; the New-York
enslaved black women. Historical Society; the New
York Public Library; Astor,
Lenox & Tilden Foundation;
Valentine Museum.

Copyright 2007, American

Social History Productions, Inc.
(Permission granted to reproduce
for educational purposes.)

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