Summary of Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers's They Were Her Property

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 White southern girls learned how to be slave owners through an instructional process that spanned their childhood and adolescence. They practiced techniques of slave discipline and management, made mistakes and learned from them, and eventually decided what kind of slave owners they wanted to become.
#2 Before the American Revolution, primogeniture was the practice of leaving all the family property to the eldest son. But after the Revolution, Americans looked upon primogeniture unfavorably, as it disadvantaged many young men and women.
#3 The wills of slave-owning parents and relatives would leave decisions about equitable distribution up to the executor. Under these circumstances, estate administrators would arrange drawing ceremonies in which they portioned out the slaves.
#4 Slave-owning parents allowed their daughters to assume the roles of instructor and disciplinarian early on, and they forced enslaved people to use the salutations Master and Mistress when referring to their children.

Sujets

• Slavery

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 09 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669352228
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers's They Were Her Property
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4 Insights from Chapter 5 Insights from Chapter 6 Insights from Chapter 7 Insights from Chapter 8
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

White southern girls learned how to be slave owners through an instructional process that spanned their childhood and adolescence. They practiced techniques of slave discipline and management, made mistakes and learned from them, and eventually decided what kind of slave owners they wanted to become.

#2

Before the American Revolution, primogeniture was the practice of leaving all the family property to the eldest son. But after the Revolution, Americans looked upon primogeniture unfavorably, as it disadvantaged many young men and women.

#3

The wills of slave-owning parents and relatives would leave decisions about equitable distribution up to the executor. Under these circumstances, estate administrators would arrange drawing ceremonies in which they portioned out the slaves.

#4

Slave-owning parents allowed their daughters to assume the roles of instructor and disciplinarian early on, and they forced enslaved people to use the salutations Master and Mistress when referring to their children.

#5

Enslaved people were required to call their owners’ children Master or Mistress. This was to reinforce the difference between white children and all other children, and the superiority of the former.

#6

Slave-owning families made it clear that they had the power to claim other human beings as their property when they selected specific enslaved children to serve them. When Betty Cofer was born, her master’s daughter Ella was only a little girl, but she nevertheless claimed Cofer as her slave shortly after the child’s birth.

#7

White girls also learned about and practiced different management and disciplinary strategies when they were in charge of their slave playmates. They would develop and refine the skills they would need once they became mistresses of their own households.

#8

The beating of Alfred, a twelve- or thirteen-year-old enslaved boy, by his master, Green Martin, and his brother, Godfry, was reported to the authorities. The sisters of the two men who were convicted of the murder testified about what they saw.

#9

The Martin sisters were not afraid of their father or brother, and they did not intervene when they saw Alfred being beaten to death. They believed that Alfred deserved the beating and the Martin men were behaving in a normal and unexceptional manner.

#10

Slave-owning women were ideally positioned to teach their children about different methods of slave management and discipline, and they did so. They also taught their daughters and sons how to interact with and control enslaved people.

#11

Some slave-owning mothers and daughters disciplined their slaves together. When Henrietta King was about eight or nine years old, she was responsible for emptying her owners’ chamber pots. Her mistress left a piece of candy on the washstand as a test, and she took it. Her mistress never beat her again, but her disfigurement was disconcerting.

#12

Some white mothers found their children to be willing pupils who easily absorbed their lessons in slave mastery, but some children clashed with their mothers over the best way to deal with slaves.

#13

The lessons of slaveholding parents were only one means by which daughters could learn about proper slave-management techniques. The Rose Bud, a weekly juvenile newspaper edited by Caroline Gilman and published through the 1830s, was another. Gilman compiled the content in the newspaper with her own children in mind.

#14

The Rose Bud also taught its readers about the ideal plantation, which was regulated with almost military precision. It explained that the pass system required enslaved people to travel from place to place and carry documentation that identified their owners.

#15

Gilman’s op-ed was probably responding to the surge of abolitionist literature written by women. But she was also providing her readers with a ready response to abolitionist attacks on southern slavery.

#16

Young white girls in the South were taught how to be efficient and effective mistresses by their slaveholding parents. They were also taught the value of whiteness and its pricelessness.

#17

White girls learned about the value of their skin color when they saw enslaved people being auctioned off. They learned about the difference between themselves and the enslaved, and between those who were seen as human merchandise and those who were seen as human beings.

#18

When young women married, they were given enslaved people as wedding gifts. Some women did not like the enslaved people their parents gave them, and would instead choose slaves themselves.

#19

Slave-owning families often gave their daughters enslaved people as gifts, and these transactions demonstrated the economic relationship between slaves and white women’s coming of age.

#20

When parents gave their daughters slaves, they more frequently gave them female slaves. They did this because females had the reproductive capacity to add to their daughters’ labor force.

#21

The parents of slaves would sometimes give their daughters female slaves, rather than male slaves, because they were more concerned about the well-being of their daughters than their husbands.

#22

Slave-owning parents knew about the legal and financial benefits of owning enslaved women, and so did their daughters. Enslaved men, particularly those in their most productive years, were of higher value in slave markets because they were strong and skilled laborers.

#23

White women’s interest in the reproduction of the enslaved women they owned could be expressed in calculated and methodical ways. They would tabulate gains and losses in the wealth that was bound up in the bodies of the infants and children they owned.

#24

The slave owners who owned these women were counting on them to be ab