The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation

Journal of Southern History, August, 2005 by Dorothy A. Smith Akubue-Brice

The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation. By Wilma A. Dunaway. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 368. Paper, $28.00, ISBN 0-521-01216-3; cloth, $80.00, ISBN 0-521-81276-3.)

Slavery in the American Mountain South. By Wilma A. Dunaway. Studies in Modern Capitalism. (New York and other cities: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii, 352. Paper, $25.00, ISBN 0-521-01215-5; cloth, $70.00, ISBN 0-521-81275-5.)

Wilma A. Dunaway gives voice to the Appalachian African American experience in two books that reveal significant groundbreaking research and advance our knowledge of slavery and black families in the mountain South. Her compelling research builds on the work of others but challenges scholars' "dominant paradigm" regarding the African American slave family by revising interpretations of the relationship between family stability and the presence of the nuclear family (The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation, p. 285). Her investigation thus sheds light on major historical issues regarding the slave family, slavery, and emancipation in a slaveholding subregion.

Dunaway selected the mountain South because "slavery has been historically misrepresented" in that region (Slavery in the American Mountain South, p. 4). She approaches the topic of slavery in the mountain South with an eye toward plantation size, types of production, the role of slaves employed in nonagricultural occupations, slave resistance, and community building. The author also documents the political and economic considerations that relate to the topic, creating a new theoretical framework by focusing on this important and neglected area of African American studies.

Dunaway challenges readers to reevaluate previous interpretations of major historical issues, rethink their perspectives within the thrust of continual debates in the field, and seek answers to broader questions. There is a major discrepancy within historical literature on the subject due to omissions and misrepresentations. Emphasis has been placed on slave agency and the stability of the nuclear slave family. Dunaway's work enriches and advances scholarship and dialogue on this topic. Furthermore, the impetus of her "study breaks new ground by investigating enslavement in a subregion ... that has been ignored by scholars" (Slavery in the American Mountain South, p. 1). She places the region within historical, chronological, geological, and geographical contexts. She also connects agricultural cash crops, commodities, raw materials, and slave labor to the world economy.

Dunaway approaches accepted interpretations by investigating broad questions, making numerous comparisons, and examining the mountain South within the "context of ongoing debates in the field of slavery studies and against the backdrop of earlier assumptions about smaller plantations" (Slavery in the American Mountain South, p. 14). Slavery in the American Mountain South documents the differences and contrasts between small and large plantations. The author employs the definition of plantation used by U.S. slavery specialists: a large plantation held fifty or more slaves; a middling slaveholder owned twenty to forty-nine slaves; and small planters owned nineteen or fewer. Dunaway avoids regarding the "'typical Appalachian slaveholder' [as] a benign small farmer who kept only a couple of slaves to help his wife out in the kitchen" (Slavery in the American Mountain South, pp. 8-9). She argues that it was the slave family on small plantations that "was the organizational center of resistance" and concludes that research on small plantations is pertinent to changing the current interpretive paradigm (The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation, p. 244). Many of the Appalachian narratives she analyzes were collected from individuals who were enslaved on small plantations.

The study of Appalachian enslavement also offers unusual opportunities to contribute to the debate about southern slavery's place in an international context. Dunaway uses quantitative data, statistical analysis by state, and slave narratives to give voice to slaves with respect to their lives, families, and labor. She argues that Appalachian slaves were "a people without written history" and that it is therefore important to use their narratives to show the transmission of their culture across nine states (p. 12).

Her work documents oral myths that aided slave community building. Particularly on small plantations, community building was one aspect of social gatherings, which "were important arenas for the formation of collective ties that made the emergence of a counter-hegemonic culture possible" (Slavery in the American Mountain South, p. 209). Funerals and social gatherings were significant methods of preserving unwritten family history. Sharing their collective past grounded slaves' day-to-day existence within a historical background.

Appalachian slaves engaged in a number of daily activities through which they built a sense of peoplehood and community solidarity. "Following the griot tradition of Africa, elders kept alive community knowledge about the past of its absent members" (Slavery in the American Mountain South, p. 206). Collective memories of loved ones were preserved through oral histories that were passed from one generation to another as part of the socialization process. Children were taught to identify all blacks as members of their community. This interaction showed the importance of preserving cultural ties and relationships within the slave community. "Fictive kin taught young children about missing parents, grandparents, siblings, and extended kin" (Slavery in the American Mountain South, p. 207). Other cultural traditions, community secrets, songs, and religious practices were handed down in the same manner.