54 pages 1 hour read

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019

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Summary and Study Guide

Overview

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South is a historical nonfiction book published in 2019 by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, an Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley. Based on her prized dissertation, They Were Her Property explores the role white women played in the perpetuation of slavery in the 19th century United States. The book earned the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in History and the Merle Curti Social History Award from the Organization of American Historians. They Were Her Property discusses the intersections of race and gender through Jones-Rogers’s analysis. Ultimately, this book offers a compelling argument that white women were not mere bystanders but active co-conspirators in the preservation and development of slavery.

Summary

Jones-Rogers begins her work by reviewing the commonly promoted historical explanations for why white southern women opposed the abolition of slavery. She counters the perspective of white women as ignorant to the harsh reality of slavery in the 19th century southern United States. Rather, she claims that white women profited from slavery and played an active role in its development. Her research is focused on married slave-owning women who worked to maintain their power and authority over enslaved people.

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