Finding Charity's Folk

Enslaved and Free Black Women in Maryland

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Discrimination & Race Relations, History, Americas, United States, 19th Century
Cover of the book Finding Charity's Folk by Professor Richard Newman, Jessica Millward, Patrick Rael, Manisha Sinha, University of Georgia Press
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Author: Professor Richard Newman, Jessica Millward, Patrick Rael, Manisha Sinha ISBN: 9780820348797
Publisher: University of Georgia Press Publication: December 15, 2015
Imprint: University of Georgia Press Language: English
Author: Professor Richard Newman, Jessica Millward, Patrick Rael, Manisha Sinha
ISBN: 9780820348797
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Publication: December 15, 2015
Imprint: University of Georgia Press
Language: English

Finding Charity’s Folk highlights the experiences of enslaved Maryland women who negotiated for their own freedom, many of whom have been largely lost to historical records. Based on more than fifteen hundred manumission records and numerous manuscript documents from a diversity of archives, Jessica Millward skillfully brings together African American social and gender history to provide a new means of using biography as a historical genre.

Millward opens with a striking discussion about how researching the life of a single enslaved woman, Charity Folks, transforms our understanding of slavery and freedom in Revolutionary America. For African American women such as Folks, freedom, like enslavement, was tied to a bondwoman’s reproductive capacities. Their offspring were used to perpetuate the slave economy. Finding loopholes in the law meant that enslaved women could give birth to and raise free children. For Millward, Folks demonstrates the fluidity of the boundaries between slavery and freedom, which was due largely to the gendered space occupied by enslaved women. The gendering of freedom influenced notions of liberty, equality, and race in what became the new nation and had profound implications for African American women’s future interactions with the state.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

Finding Charity’s Folk highlights the experiences of enslaved Maryland women who negotiated for their own freedom, many of whom have been largely lost to historical records. Based on more than fifteen hundred manumission records and numerous manuscript documents from a diversity of archives, Jessica Millward skillfully brings together African American social and gender history to provide a new means of using biography as a historical genre.

Millward opens with a striking discussion about how researching the life of a single enslaved woman, Charity Folks, transforms our understanding of slavery and freedom in Revolutionary America. For African American women such as Folks, freedom, like enslavement, was tied to a bondwoman’s reproductive capacities. Their offspring were used to perpetuate the slave economy. Finding loopholes in the law meant that enslaved women could give birth to and raise free children. For Millward, Folks demonstrates the fluidity of the boundaries between slavery and freedom, which was due largely to the gendered space occupied by enslaved women. The gendering of freedom influenced notions of liberty, equality, and race in what became the new nation and had profound implications for African American women’s future interactions with the state.

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