Black elders : the meaning of age in American slavery and freedom / Frederick Knight.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Knight, Frederick, author.

Series:

Early American studies.

Early American studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Older African Americans--History.

Older African Americans.

African Americans--History--To 1863.

African Americans.

African Americans--History--1863-1877.

Southern States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (241 pages) : illustrations, portraits, charts.

Place of Publication:

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2024]

Summary:

"In Black Elders, Frederick C. Knight explores the experiences of African Americans with aging and in old age during the eras of slavery and emancipation. Though slavery put a premium on young labor, elders worked as caregivers, domestics, cooks, or midwives and performed other tasks in the margins of Southern and Northern economies. Looking at black families, churches, mutual aid societies, and homes for the aged, Knight demonstrates the pivotal role of elders in the history of African American community formation through Reconstruction. Drawing on a wide array of printed and archival sources, including slave narratives, plantation records, letters, diaries, meeting minutes, and state and federal archives, Knight also examines how blacks and whites, men and women, and the young and the old developed competing ideas about age and aging, differences that shaped social relations in coastal West and West Central Africa, the Atlantic and domestic slave trades, colonial and antebellum Southern slave societies, and emancipation in the North and South. Black Elders offers a unique window into the individual and collective lives of African Americans, the day-to-day struggles they waged around their experiences of aging, and how they drew upon these resources to define the meaning of family, community, and freedom"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Coastal Africa and Atlantic slavery

Management, labor, and life cycles

The "Law of respect to elders"

Communities of care and concern

Home for the aged

Epilogue : a Black wisdom tradition.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781512825671

1512825670

OCLC:

1401648236