A bold and searing
investigation into the role of white women in the American slave
economy
Bridging women’s
history, the history of the South, and African American history, this
book makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American
slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of
sources to show that slave‑owning women were sophisticated
economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the
South’s slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves
than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth.
Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their
slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that
were as effective and brutal as those used by slave‑owning men.
White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from
it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the
economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave‑owning
women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink
the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.
