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Author Myers, Amrita Chakrabarti, author

Title Forging freedom : Black women and the pursuit of liberty in antebellum Charleston / Amrita Chakrabarti Myers
Published Chapel Hill : The University of North Carolina Press, [2011]
©2011

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Description 1 online resource (xi, 267 pages) : illustrations
Series Gender and American culture
Gender & American culture.
Contents Introduction: imagining freedom in the slave South -- City of contrasts: Charleston before the Civil War -- A way out of no way: Black women and manumission -- To survive and thrive: race, sex, and waged labor in the city -- The currency of citizenship: property ownership and Black female freedom -- A tale of two women: the lives of Cecille Cogdell and Sarah Sanders -- A fragile freedom: the story of Margaret Bettingall and her daughters -- Epilogue: the continuing search for freedom
Summary "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"--Provided by publisher
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 249-261) and index
Notes English
Online resource (HeinOnline, viewed July 26, 2021)
Subject African American women -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- History -- 19th century
African American women -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- Social conditions -- 19th century
African American women -- United States -- History -- 19th century
African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc. -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- 19th century
Freed persons -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- History -- 19th century
Freed persons -- South Carolina -- Charleston -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Enslaved persons -- Emancipation -- United States -- History -- 19th century
Antislavery movements -- United States -- History -- 19th century
African Americans -- History -- 1863-1877.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Women's Studies.
HISTORY -- United States -- State & Local -- South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV)
African American women
African American women -- Social conditions
African Americans
African Americans -- Legal status, laws, etc.
Antislavery movements
Freed persons
Freed persons -- Social conditions
Race relations
Enslaved persons -- Emancipation
Social conditions
SUBJECT Charleston (S.C.) -- History -- 1775-1865. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85022689
Charleston (S.C.) -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Charleston (S.C.) -- Race relations -- History -- 19th century
Subject South Carolina -- Charleston
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 9780807869093
0807869090
9781469602592
1469602598