The Journal of African American History
Volume 98, Issue No. 1
JAAH Special Issue, Winter 2013
"Women, Slavery, and the Atlantic World"
The most recent
issue of The Journal of African American History (JAAH) is a Special
Issue devoted to "Women, Slavery, and the Atlantic World." Edited by
Brenda Stevenson, Professor of History at UCLA, the Special Issue
presents new and original analyses and interpretations of the often
tragic experiences of enslaved African and African American
women in various parts of the Atlantic World from late 17th to the
mid-19th centuries. Jane Landers, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Professor
of History at Vanderbilt University, documents the lives and leadership
roles of "La Virreina Juana" in Cartagena, New Granada (now Colombia) in
the 1690s and Nansi Wiggins in Spanish Florida before the U.S. takeover
in 1821. Both women were "founding mothers" who left legacies of
discipline, militancy, and resistance for the free black communities
they helped to create.
Jessica Millward,
Assistant Professor of History, UC Irvine, traces the legacies of
Charity Folks who gained her freedom in 1797 only after she had worked
to obtain the manumission of her children. While Millward's "Charity
Folks, Lost Royalty, and the Bishop Family of Maryland and New York"
offers of micro-history of women and slavery in Annapolis, Maryland, in
the colonial and early national eras, the significant contributions of
Charity Folks' descendants to African American and American life and
history demonstrate that she was a "founding mother" of an African
American royal family
Margaret
Washington, Professor of History at Cornell University and author of the
award winning Sojourner Truth's America (2009), reexamines in detail
Truth's religious adventures and mishaps in New York City in the late
1820s when she was still "Isabella Van Wagenen." In this period Isabella
lived in interracial communes with religious perfectionists who
believed in sexual freedom and women's participation in social reform.
When Isabella Van Wagenen was put on trial accused of poisoning one of
the perfectionist ministers, the female members of her "Holy Band"
publicly supported their sister who had been slandered and falsely
charged.
Andrew Apter,
Professor of History and Anthropology at UCLA, uncovers elements of
Yoruba and Yoruba-descended ideas and practices of womanhood in West
Africa, North and South America, and in the Caribbean. "Blood of
Mothers: Women, Money, and Markets in Yoruba-Atlantic Perspective"
explores African and African American women's social and economic
activities that reflect this Yoruba-based cultural foundation.
While scholars of
U. S. slavery have noted the existence of concubine relationships
between wealthy white slaveholders and enslaved African American women,
Brenda Stevenson provides the first detailed and systematic analysis of
these practices. "What's Love Got to Do With It? Concubinage and
Enslaved Black Women and Girls in the Antebellum South" offers a wide
ranging examination of the experiences of enslaved concubines and
documents how these women were viewed by non-slaveholding white men,
white women, and enslaved and free African Americans.
Delia's Tears: Race, Science, and Photography in Nineteenth Century America
(2010) by Molly Rogers tells the disturbing story behind the making of
seven recently discovered daguerreotypes of people of African descent,
originally produced in 1850 at the request of Swiss naturalist Louis
Agassiz to support his convenient theory of "polygenesis." In the essay
review "Racial Science and Early American Photography," historian Elaine
Allen Lechtrech reviews Rogers's findings and brings us up to date on
the efforts of Swiss social activists to have Agassiz's name removed
from a prominent mountain range in Switzerland.
"Women, Slavery, and the Atlantic World" is available in hard copy from ASALH through Publications Director Karen May, at kmay@asalh.net, 202-238-5910 or follow the link to purchase.
The digital version will soon be available through "JSTOR Current
Journals," please check and make sure your university subscribes to the
program.
