Labor of love, labor of sorrow : black women, work and the family, from slavery to the present / Jacqueline Jones.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jones, Jacqueline, 1948-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African American women--Employment--History.

African American women.

African American women--History.

History.

African American families--History.

African American families.

African American women--Employment.

Physical Description:

xvi, 440 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York, NY : Basic Books, [2010]

Summary:

The forces that shaped the institution of human bondage in the American South endured, albeit in altered form, long after the Thirteenth Amendment was ratified by the states. Whether black women toiled in a sweltering Virginia tobacco factory in the 1890s or in the kitchen of a Chicago white woman in the 1950s, they felt the oppressive force of racial and gender ideologies, ideas of social difference that until the mid-1960s carried the weight of law. Throughout American history, black women's meager wages-and in the case of slavery, lack of any wages at all-stood in stark contrast to their strenuous labors in the work force and at home. In their efforts to sustain family ties and preserve a vital group culture, they shared a common purpose with wives and mothers of all groups.

In her classic account Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, now fully revised and updated, acclaimed historian Jacqueline Jones describes the changing role of black women, lending a voice to an unsung struggle from the depths of slavery to the ongoing fight for civil rights.

Contents:

1 "My Mother Was Much of a Woman": Slavery, 1830-1860 9

2 Enslaved Women Becoming Freedwomen: The Civil War and Reconstruction 43

3 "Bent Backs and Laboring Muscles": in the Rural South, 1880-1915 77

4 Between the Southern Cotton Field and the Northern Ghetto: the Urban South, 1880-1915 103

5 "To Get Out of this Land of Sufring": Black Women Migrants to the North, 1900-1930 131

6 Harder Times: The Great Depression 163

7 The Roots of Two Revolutions, 1940-1955 195

8 The Struggle Confirmed and Transformed, 1955-1980 229

9 Crosscurrents of Past and Present, 1980-2009 267.

Notes:

Rev. ed. of: Labor of love, labor of sorrow. 1985.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780465018819

0465018815

OCLC:

316825575