Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Date

2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Department

History

Committee Chair

Susan O'Donovan

Committee Member

Beverly Bond

Committee Member

Sarah Potter

Committee Member

Calvin Schermerhorn

Abstract

This dissertation examines the movement of enslaved people in the antebellum United States from the Upper South to the cotton frontier of the Deep South and the impact that forced relocation had on family formation over time. This move took an entire generation of slaves and artificially placed them together, often with little thought of their desires or needs. Slaves, typically young and strong of back wherein to manage the extreme labor demands of cotton cultivation, often did not have the benefit of older family members with which to learn and gain generational knowledge in the early years of the establishment of the cotton frontier. They strove to build new lives of their own design, lives that met their needs of physical, social, and emotional survival. This building and rebuilding of families, often numerous times, resulted in a multiplicity of familial structures, structures which endured growing pains and conflicts and acted as a first line of defense against the ravages of slavery. After emancipation, this building and reclaiming of family became a hallmark of freedpeoples lives. In mining multiple first-person slave accounts, newspapers, legal records, plantation diaries, and personal letters, this dissertation asserts that the enslaved and later freed families of the Deep South did not always conform to rigid social boundaries and norms. They fought through extraordinary trauma and circumstances, separations and sales, to restore families and often to build something entirely new, a family built of their own intention. What emerges is a story of family fluidity, one with far-reaching implications, even into current political and social debates on what the family is in the U.S.

Comments

Data is provided by the student.

Library Comment

Dissertation or thesis originally submitted to ProQuest

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