At the Threshold of Liberty (eBook)

Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, D.C.

Tamika Y. Nunley (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021
272 Seiten
The University of North Carolina Press (Verlag)
978-1-4696-6223-7 (ISBN)

Infos

The capital city of a nation founded on the premise of liberty, nineteenth-century Washington, D.C., was both an entrepot of urban slavery and the target of abolitionist ferment. The growing slave trade and the enactment of Black codes placed the city's Black women within the rigid confines of a social hierarchy ordered by race and gender. At the Threshold of Liberty reveals how these women--enslaved, fugitive, and free--imagined new identities and lives beyond the oppressive restrictions intended to prevent them from ever experiencing liberty, self-respect, and power.Consulting newspapers, government documents, letters, abolitionist records, legislation, and memoirs, Tamika Y. Nunley traces how Black women navigated social and legal proscriptions to develop their own ideas about liberty as they escaped from slavery, initiated freedom suits, created entrepreneurial economies, pursued education, and participated in political work. In telling these stories, Nunley places Black women at the vanguard of the history of Washington, D.C., and the momentous transformations of nineteenth-century America.

Autor

Tamika Y. Nunley is associate professor of history at Cornell University.

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 22.2.2021
• Reihe/Serie: The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
• Reihe/Serie: The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
• Zusatzinfo: 7 halftones, 1 map
• Verlagsort: Chapel Hill
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 160 x 160 mm
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Empirische Sozialforschung
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Gender Studies
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie ► Makrosoziologie
• Schlagworte: Abolition • African American • antebellum schools • Black Church • Black Codes • black girls • black women • black women enterprises • bondwomen • Civil War • District of Columbia • Emancipation • Federal City • Freedmen’s Bureau • freedom • fugitives • Identity • Liberty • nation’s capital • Prostitution • resistance • Runaway • slave law • Slavery • slave trade • Underground Railroad • Union war • Washington, D.C. • Women
• ISBN-10: 1-4696-6223-X / 146966223X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-4696-6223-7 / 9781469662237