Chained to the rock of adversity : to be free, Black & female in the Old South / edited by Virginia Meacham Gould.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Gould, Virginia Meacham.

Series:

Southern voices from the past

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Johnson family.

African American women--Mississippi--Natchez Region--History--19th century--Sources.

African American women.

African American women--Louisiana--New Orleans Region--History--19th century--Sources.

African American women--Mississippi--Natchez Region--Social life and customs--Sources.

African American women--Louisiana--New Orleans Region--Social life and customs--Sources.

Free African Americans--Mississippi--Natchez Region--History--19th century--Sources.

Free African Americans.

Free African Americans--Louisiana--New Orleans Region--History--19th century--Sources.

Archives.

History.

Manners and customs.

Natchez Region (Miss.)--Race relations--Sources.

Natchez Region (Miss.).

New Orleans Region (La.)--Race relations--Sources.

New Orleans Region (La.).

Johnson family--Archives.

Louisiana--New Orleans Region.

Mississippi--Natchez Region.

Physical Description:

liv, 96 pages, 6 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Athens : University of Georgia Press, [1998]

Summary:

Chained to the Rock of Adversity offers valuable insight into the lives of the South's free women of color, using personal letters and a diary to tell an extraordinary story.

The letters were written to two women, Ann Battles Johnson and her eldest daughter Anna, between 1844 and 1899. Ann was the wife of the prosperous barber and businessman William T. Johnson of Natchez, Mississippi. Most of the letters were from family members who lived scattered up and down the Mississippi River, from Natchez to New Orleans. A few were from friends of the family. Nearly all were from women. The diary was written by Catharine Geraldine Johnson, another of Ann and William's daughters.

A freed slave herself, Ann Johnson became the head of her family and a slaveholder when her husband died in 1851. As the letters reveal, her days were filled with the often tedious and sometimes overwhelming duties assigned to slaveholding women. Although the nature of her roles as daughter, sister, wife, mother, slaveholder, and manager linked her to other women of the slaveholding class, her race separated her from them.

Taken together the letters and diary depict a tight-knit network of family and friends that reached across Mississippi and Louisiana. They also show a family aware of its precarious position in society, feared and poorly treated by most white neighbors and resented by other blacks. Editor Virginia Meacham Gould provides an extensive introduction, a cast of characters, identifying notes, and a brief afterword tracing the Johnson family to the present day.

Contents:

Family Members and Other Principals liii

The Prewar Family Letters of the Johnson-Miller Women of Natchez and New Orleans 1

The Postwar Family Letters of the Johnson-Miller Women of Natchez and New Orleans 39

The Diary of Catharine Geraldine Johnson, 1864-1874 67.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0820319961

0820320838

OCLC:

38542738