Together the stories of the slave holders and the enslaved. Histories of enslaved people, advertisements, sales records, legal documents, Court Records and more. Two weeks ago here at the national a archives we displayed the d. C. Emancipation act, which ended slavery in the district of columbia in 1862. Ringgold claim iing harry goodm, a gift from her sister, was worth 50. They were her property received a number of reviews, stunning new book. The New York Times said it is a taught and coached and corrected that examine house historians have misunderstood and misrepresented white women as reluctant actors. And in the Washington Post elizabeth barren writes jonesrogers has provided an insight into slavery. Stephanie jonesrogers is an associate professor of history at the university of california, berkeley, where she specializes in africanAmerican History, womens and general history. They were her property is based on her revised dissertation. Lerner scott prize in u. S. Womens history in 2013. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome stephanie jonesrogers. Thank you so much for that invitation thank you so much for the invitation and the introduction. Thank you all for coming this afternoon and spending your lunchtime with me. This is James Redpath after touring the antebellum south. He attempted to explain for his readers why white southern women opposed southern emancipation. He believed their sentiments, reared as they were, under the shadow of the peculiar institution. Slavery was, quote, incessantly praised and defended, end quote. Virtually everywhere these women went, by everyone they knew, and in most of the publications that they read. Their consciences were easily perverted, redpath argued. With the result that they saw no reason to change their views. Redpath assumed that white southern women did not know negro slavery as it is because their society shielded them from the institutions horrific realities. Insulated by southern patriarchs, he argued, white women seldom saw slaveries most obnoxious features. They never, quote, attend auctions, end quote. Never witness what were called examinations. Seldom, if ever, saw, quote, the neg negroes lashed, end quote. More profoundly, they did not know that the interstate trade in slaves was a gigantic commerce. Southern men revealed only the southside view of slavery, redpath said, and if women of the south knew slavery as it is, they would join in the organizations against it. But narrative sources and government correspondence make it clear that white southern women knew the most obnoxious features of slavery all too well. Slaveowning women not only witnessed the most brutal features of slavery, they took part in them, profited from them and defended them. After hearing what James Redpath said, we might think that white women were invisible in southern slave markets. They are most notably absent from this painting from 1854 that depicts a very public slave action in charleston, South Carolina. Or we might think of them as distanced from the horrors of the market from the sales, and also from the traumatic celebrations that came off those sales were finalized. We might think that white women and their children were passive observers of all of this. And more so that they were stopping the horrors and the traumatic celebrations. This image is a depiction of the trauma and the violence of the separations that occurred after a slave auction took place and an enslaved person was sold away from their family. Highlighted in the yellow box you can see a white woman and a child distanced from that separation, distanced from that horror and trauma, separated from an indirectly kind of witness, but experiencing that, but not directly implicated in the violence and the trauma of the market. But this is not how enslaved and formerly enslaved people remember things at all. First, they made it clear that white southern womens economic relationships to slavery began in childhood and, in some cases, during infancy, not just in adulthood. Filmore hancock, for example, told the interviewer his grandmother, quote, was given to the mistress as her own on the day she was born. Remarkably, he recalled that old misses was only 1yearold then. So his grandmother was given to her mistress when she was only 1, 1 years old. Enslaved people and former ly enslaved people talk about the lifelong process of socialization. And the rituals that drove this point ohm for enslaved and free people alike. White slaveowning girls also made it clear that they had the power to claim other africanamericans as their property when they selected specific is enslaved children to serve them. When betty coffer was born, for example, her masters daughter, ella, was only a little girl, but she nevertheless claimed betty coffer as her slave shortly after betty was born. They played together and grew up together, betty recalled. Eventually betty became ellas personal servant, waiting on her, standing behind her chair during mealtimes and sleeping beside her on the bedroom floor. More profoundly, formerly enslaved people tell us that the process of socialization was effective. White girls often made claims of ownership in their conversations with enslaved people. A formerly enslaved woman rec l recalls a story her mistress would say, when i get married to a prince, you come with me and take care of all my childrens. And when she did, in fact, marry, she took her to her households. Young white women thought about how enslaved people would fit into their lives. Not just as playmates or companions, but as property. When they were old enough, they turned their imagings into reality. Formerly enslaved people remarked on how this process of socialization also involved lessons about slave management and discipline, what we would typically refer to as slave mastery. Nancy thomas recalled she was the special little girl for her mistress harriets daughter, pelonia and even during them days, she would sew and knit. Nancy went on to say how she had a little threelegged stool and she would set it between pelonis legs while she was setting down, then pelonia would watch her while she knitted. If she did something wrong, pelonia would pinch nancys ear a little and say you dropped a stitch, nanny. As this testimony shows, pelonia is what i refer to as a mistress in the making. Responsible for overseeing the production of the enslaved girl she would come to own and disciplining her when it did not meet her requirements. So serving as the metaphorical flies on the walls, formerly enslaved people talked about some of the most traumatic, intimate dimensions of those who were bound and those who were free. They heard and saw things that typically remained obscured from view, details that white slaveowning couples often left out of their personal correspondence or public communications. That is, when they were able to write at all. Many of the slaveowning women i discuss in this book contended with some form of illiteracy. They were either unable to write and read or possess the ability to do one, but not the other. Enslaved and formerly enslaved peoples recollections serve as some of the only archival records to survive. No group spoke about white womens investments in slavery more often or more powerfully than the enslaved people subjected to their ownership and control. They were the people whose lives were forever changed, when a mistress sold someone just so that she could buy a new dress. They were best equipped to describe the agony that shook their bodies and souls when they returned from their errands to discuss to discover that their children were gone and their mistresses were counting piles of money they had received from the slave traders who bought them. Only enslaved people could speak about their female owners profound economic contributions to their continued enslavement with such astonishing precision. So what did formerly enslaved people have to say about white females economic relationships to the institution of slavery . Formerly enslaved peoples interviews offer insight into the most intimate workings of white households as well. Formerly enslaved people like mary edwards, who you see pictured here, for example, tell us that in some households, breastfeeding constituted another form of labor that slave owners required enslaved women to perform. For warren taylors mother, for example, nursing white children was one of her primary jobs. But for enslaved mothers, nursing white children was the only work they performed in slavery. These recollections make it clear that white mothers didnt simply use enslaved mothers to breastfeed their children because of physiological ailments that resulted in inadequate milk supply or inability to produce milk at all, or as a last resort. But they compelled enslaved mothers to perform this labor as a matter of course in some households. Moreover, in order for enslaved women to serve in this capacity consistently, they also had to give birth or, at the very least, lactate on a routine basis. But what often remains unexplored is what led to these constant conceptions in the first place. While enslaved women perform the most arduous of labor, they also had to conceive, carry a pregnancy to full term, give birth and lactate in order to serve as wet nurses in the first place. Some of the enslaved womens children were undoubtedly conceived within relationships of love, but others were undoubtedly the result of sexual assault. So, how widespread was this phenomen phenomenon . Widespread enough that a niche market, a very small corner but nevertheless a significant corner of the slave market emerged in order to fulfill white mothers demands for enslaved wet nurses. The market in enslaved nurses was primarily wet nurses was primarily a hiring one, but these ads reveal that some of the enslaved women and mothers were offered for sale, and that their capacity to serve as wet nurses was a selling point. So, these are just three examples of some of the newspaper advertisements that i collected as part of the research for this book, which reflect a number of things. One, that white mothers were creating such a demand for enslaved mothers services and labor as wet nurses that they were not only putting these ads, placing these ads in southern newspapers, but also what you dont see in these, but in others, what also becomes clear is that white women were also some of the individuals who were supplying these white mothers with the enslaved mothers and wet nurses that they wanted, that they were seeking. Here, these three are examples of enslaved wet nurses, seeking enslaved wet nurses either to purchase or to hire. I found there was an important intersection and connection between the slave wet nurses and slave market. So most of the men and individuals who were offering enslaved women. Enslaved women were also buying and selling enslaved people. So, in addition to that, we attend very closely to what enslaved and formerly enslaved people had to say about white womens economic investments in slavery. It becomes clear that they had so much to tell us about the institution of slavery and the roles that white women played in the slave market economy, and in their continued captivity. We learn that when they said that they belonged to white women, they meant belonged to by law. Sally nightengale owned marcia and her daughter, for example. What you see here is whats referred to as a lost friends act. Also typically they were referred to as information wanted ads. And these are very unique in large part because they emerge right as the civil war is coming to an end, and also in the years following the civil war. And what they reflect is formerly enslaved peoples attempts to reconstitute their families, so all of those individuals who belonged to their families and communities that had been sold away from them, that they wanted to reconnect with family members, children, mothers and fathers, and even brothers and uncles who they had lost contact with because of sale and separation, they placed these ads in order to try to reconnect with those individuals, to find those people and reconstitute their families. And so these advertisements also show more than simply their attempts to reconnect with their families. But they also show how those separations occurred in the first place, and they highlight in many of them they highlight the owners, who were responsible not simply for their sale, but their separation. Here what im showing is an advertisement placed by caroline mason, seeking information about her family members. And so what she says here is that she was owned by betsy mason acres white woman, and was sold by her as well. So, she doesnt simply say that, you know, she inadvertently was sold by some man who was related to betsy. She identifies betsy as her legal owner, but also the person who was ultimately responsible for the separations that occurred after those sales took place. This is another advertisement, which goes a little bit farther, more deeper, and show morse complex elements or dimensions of slavery. William mays advertisement highlights several things, not only about white slaveowning women and their families, but also their business practices. So he not only identifies his female owner, telalice stokes, but he also describes the conflicts within her family over her property and her Property Rights. He argues and tells us that his mother and siblings were stolen. A grandson and a grandmother. He is not willing to recognize the kind of inviability of telalist stokes Property Rights in this particular case. He also says that while she was his owner, that she would hire him out. So he refers to this as living with simpson at the time. So in the top element he talks about jacks simpsons decision to steal his family away from him, and also talks about telealice business practices, meaning she would hire him out and receive his wages in return for the labor that he performed for simpson in this particular case. And here, it is really getting at some of the more complex dimensions of slavery that often dont enter into the kind of popular understanding of the institution, of the ways in which enslaved people were passed between people, how those separations occurred, et cetera. So here what guy smith is telling us is that his wife he and his wife were separated from their children, and that his children were drawn. It refers to a process called being drawn, by different members of his owners family, some of whom were women. But in doing so, he also talks about the Legal Process by which these separations took place. He doesnt use all the terms that we would like to that we would think to look for, but he very plainly tells us that while these separations of family members didnt take place in the slave market, they nonetheless brought about the same kinds of traumat traumat traumatic separations from loved ones. This process of being drawn and falling to someone refers to the process that happens during an estate, the administration of a deceased persons estate in this particular context. So his owner dies, and then after that owner died, all of his property was then they would, in fact, have a drawing. So very much like a lottery. They would put the names of the individual heirs into a bag or hat. And that individual heir would also the name would also be written alongside a group of enslaved people, or that person would draw. So, they would draw either their names out of a hat, and then that person would be told what property they received, or they would draw out a piece of paper that had a list of property that they would receive. There were a variety of ways that this ritual took place. And so they literally did, in fact, draw enslaved people as part of this Estate Division process. And so that is what guy is referring to here. And so this is not simply something that enslaved people talked about in legal in terms that arent necessarily proper legalese, but these recollections are also reflected in documents that appear in archival collections throughout the south. What you see here is a handwritten document that shows exactly what guy smith is referring to, an Estate Division in which it lists the individual enslaved people that are a part of that deceased persons estate, and it also shows the ages of those enslaved people. It shows the values, the estimated values of those enslaved people. And then towards the bottom, at the very bottom of this document, it shows which heirs drew which enslaved people. And so what i thought was really remarkable about this document, and in relationship to what guy shows in his loss friends ad is that Elizabeth Henry, the very top line there, Elizabeth Henry drew more enslaved people than the other heir, richard henry, did. And why is this important . What i show in the book is that clo colonial historians, historians that look at slavery in the colonial period in the country show that slaveowner parents would typically give their daughters more slaves than any other form of property. They would give them other property. They would give them money and in some cases ive seen stocks and bonds given to daughters, but they would often give their daughters far more enslaved people than other forms of property, particularly land. And they would give their sons the land. So when that couple got together, they would have everything they needed to get a start, to get a start on that new life that they were going to be living. I see the same thing happen in the 19th century. Throughout the 19th century, you see similar patterns where slaveowning parents would also give their daughters more enslaved people than land. This is reflective of the fact that even if richard did not receive land, he actually you can see that kind of inheritance practice play out here in this document, by showing that she received elizabeth received more slaves than the other heir, which might suggest also that he received land in addition to receiving those enslaved people. And so i think these sources are really important to showing kind of the process by which i wrote the book. Because i centered the acts of accounts and reflections of formerly enslaved people in order to lead me in more productive directions, in relation to the sources. So by just looking at fragments of information, data for those scientists that might be in the room or mathematically inclined folks in the room, by using the data that formerly enslaved people provided, i was able to piece together some of the details of the lives of the female owners that they identify. And so this is a really important or really interesting example of that process for me. So, James Skinner was a reverend who lived in mississippi. And on november 20th, 1879, he placed this lost friends ad in the southwestern christian advocate, because he was looking for his brother, edward. And so the last time john had seen edward was on october 12th, 1860, in georgetown and in the district of columb