Black Family in the 19th Century

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of the family that the slave had. Walter Johnson wrote that when slaves heard that they might be sold, they took the opportunity to rebel. One of the most common ways in which the rebellion took shape, was in the form of running away. Men were much more likely to run away than women because the “early age of first pregnancy made it more difficult for women to take such risks than men”.1 Women who were unable to run away to freedom took other methods to try and avoid being sold. One such method was hiding the person who was to be sold until the master agreed not to sell them. Women also enlisted the help of the other slaves in the community and they withheld their labor, as well as that of the children.2 These and other similar stories that Johnson presents shows the family, and similarly the community, as a cohesive unit that exhausts all means necessary in order to try and stay together. In contrast to this, however, Johnson also presents cases in which the family became ...

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to the male breadwinners”.4 Racial discrimination was still was common and it kept “women locked into such jobs as maids, laudresses and cooks”.5 While these jobs didn’t pay much, it is similar to the method shown by Johnson because it shows that everyone in the family was dedicated to doing what they could in order to make things better for the whole family.
Children too were also put to work with the young boys working with the fathers in the fields and the young girls were also sent out into the cities in order to sell their services. Koman’s example shows how single girls and young women went into nearby cities, such as Washington D.C., to work and how they counted on ...

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