Black Women in Mississippi - Transition from Slavery...and Marriage

18thVirginia

Major
Joined
Sep 8, 2012
We've examined various groups of women in the states of the old Southwest and we come to Mississippi. A lot of Mississippi history of women focuses on Vicksburg, but a book by Noralee Frankel, Freedom's Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi, examines the changes that the Civil War made in the lives of black women in Mississippi. She spends a lot of time around the issues of marriage, which she presents somewhat differently than many typical overviews of black women's lives.

Mollie Williams MS.jpg


Mollie Williams, former slave in Mississippi
 
We've examined various groups of women in the states of the old Southwest and we come to Mississippi. A lot of Mississippi history of women focuses on Vicksburg, but a book by Noralee Frankel, Freedom's Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi, examines the changes that the Civil War made in the lives of black women in Mississippi. She spends a lot of time around the issues of marriage, which she presents somewhat differently than many typical overviews of black women's lives.

View attachment 153441

Mollie Williams, former slave in Mississippi
How so.
 
Book review: Freedom’s Women; from the blog Milliken's Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory:

As we close out Black History Month, and begin Women’s History Month, this seems like a fitting time to discuss how black women in the region of Milliken’s Bend were affected by the war. One of the finest works I have read about African-American women and families is Noralee Frankel’s Freedom’s Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi.Expired Image Removed

Much of her book concerns women in the region of Vicksburg. She discusses slave marriages, which came in many forms. One couple might have been forced to be together at the insistence of the slaveholder. Another couple might have lived together on the same plantation for many decades, mutually loving each other as in any other marriage – but still not officially married because slaves did not have the power to enter into contracts. In other cases, a couple may have been separated by sale or migration. In such times, both the man and the woman, after a time, would probably “take up” with someone else. If a “married” couple decided they wanted to separate (for there was no divorce, since there was no marriage), then they simply “quit” each other.​

The rest of the review is here.

- Alan
 
Book review: Freedom’s Women; from the blog Milliken's Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory:

As we close out Black History Month, and begin Women’s History Month, this seems like a fitting time to discuss how black women in the region of Milliken’s Bend were affected by the war. One of the finest works I have read about African-American women and families is Noralee Frankel’s Freedom’s Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi.Expired Image Removed

Much of her book concerns women in the region of Vicksburg. She discusses slave marriages, which came in many forms. One couple might have been forced to be together at the insistence of the slaveholder. Another couple might have lived together on the same plantation for many decades, mutually loving each other as in any other marriage – but still not officially married because slaves did not have the power to enter into contracts. In other cases, a couple may have been separated by sale or migration. In such times, both the man and the woman, after a time, would probably “take up” with someone else. If a “married” couple decided they wanted to separate (for there was no divorce, since there was no marriage), then they simply “quit” each other.​

The rest of the review is here.

- Alan

Fascinating! Thank you for sharing this!
 
There are so many fascinating stories of black women born in Mississippi (among other places) who thankfully lived to transition from slavery. Mother Anne Clark is definitely one of them. She was interviewed in 1937 on her 112th birthday. An excerpt from the interview is provided below. God bless her!

Mother Ann Clark.jpg


"My poppa was strong. He never had a lick in his life. He helped the marster, but one day the marster says, 'Si, you got to have a whoppin', and my poppa says, 'I never had a whoppin' and you cain't whop me.' An' the marster says, 'But I kin kill you,' an' he shot my poppa down. My mama tuk him in the cabin and put him on a pallet. He died.

"My mama did the washin' for the big house. She tuk a big tub on her head and a bucket of water in her hand. My mama had two white chillen by marster and they were sold as slaves. I had two chillen, too. I never married. They allus said we'd steal, but I didn' take a thing. Why, they'd put me on a hoss with money to take into town and I'd take it to the store in town, and when I'd git back, marster'd say, 'Anne, you didn' take a thing.'

"When women was with child they'd dig a hole in the groun' and put their stomach in the hole, and then beat 'em. They'd allus whop us."
 
What's one step tougher than steel? These are so valuable, albeit extraordinarily difficult to read. Enslaved women's experiences during the war seem the least discussed, which is so bizarre- had to be the most affected segment of the population. Thanks very much for the books.

Frederick Douglas wrote his bio because of course it was doubted anyone as polished as he could have been enslaved. I see no difference in sheer eloquence between Mother Clark and Douglas.
 
There are so many fascinating stories of black women born in Mississippi (among other places) who thankfully lived to transition from slavery. Mother Anne Clark is definitely one of them. She was interviewed in 1937 on her 112th birthday. An excerpt from the interview is provided below. God bless her!

View attachment 153466

"My poppa was strong. He never had a lick in his life. He helped the marster, but one day the marster says, 'Si, you got to have a whoppin', and my poppa says, 'I never had a whoppin' and you cain't whop me.' An' the marster says, 'But I kin kill you,' an' he shot my poppa down. My mama tuk him in the cabin and put him on a pallet. He died.

"My mama did the washin' for the big house. She tuk a big tub on her head and a bucket of water in her hand. My mama had two white chillen by marster and they were sold as slaves. I had two chillen, too. I never married. They allus said we'd steal, but I didn' take a thing. Why, they'd put me on a hoss with money to take into town and I'd take it to the store in town, and when I'd git back, marster'd say, 'Anne, you didn' take a thing.'

"When women was with child they'd dig a hole in the groun' and put their stomach in the hole, and then beat 'em. They'd allus whop us."
We all know these things happened. But every time one reads a first-hand account like this it is heart-wrenching....
 
We all know these things happened. But every time one reads a first-hand account like this it is heart-wrenching....

Yes, exactly and gut-wrenching. Those women only had two choices - be incredibly strong to carry on or to mentally collapse. I really can't imagine such an awful choice.
 
Sorry I didn't get any further last night, it seems that we don't have enough local broadband to accommodate both tourists and locals and I didn't have internet for awhile.

First, a few demographics about slavery in Mississippi. In 1860, 436,631 people were enslaved in Mississippi, with only 775 free people of African American heritage. Most of the enslaved lived on plantations where there were more than 15 slaves. The numbers of enslaved persons in Mississippi had increased rapidly, up from 32,814 slaves in 1820. The plantations with African Americans were located in the Delta, the northwest corner of Mississippi, the Natchez area along the Mississippi in the Southwest, and the Tombigbee Prairie in the Northeast.

The majority of enslaved African Americans in Mississippi had come from Maryland and Virginia, with some from North Carolina and Georgia and had been transported to New Orleans, marched overland, or brought by traders down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Mississippi had become the largest producer of cotton in the U.S. just prior to the Civil war, producing over 535 million pounds of cotton, up from 192.3 million pounds in 1839. Much of that change was due to the opening of the Chickasaw and Choctaw lands to settlement, with 7 million acres of public lands sold in Mississippi between 1833 and 1837.

SlavePopulationUS18601.jpg

Map of Slave Populations in 1860

SlavePopulationUS18601.jpg
 
We often read that those women who served in the Big House had an easier time as slaves. Frankel quotes a description of a house slave, Mary's day, as related by Historian James Cobb. Mary lived on the Doro Plantation of Charles Clark.**

Before breakfast, Mary milked the cows, cooked breakfast for the masters and food for some of the other servants, made the beds, washed the dishes, and nursed her own baby. After breakfast, she cleaned the kitchen, made dinner, washed dishes, cleaned the dining room, washed clothes and hung them out, began preparing supper, then milked again, nursed her child, cleaned the kitchen and retired. Frankel, Freedom's Women, p. 6.

3c25152v.jpg

Washing clothes, from WPA Slave Narratives for Mississippi, LoC

**Doro Plantation was a 5,000 acre plantation near Beulah in Bolivar County, along the Mississippi.
 
A lot of the information about slave marriages comes from the pension files of the widows of men who served with the USCT during the Civil War. Formal marriages between slaves were forbidden by law, but even informal "married" relationships had to be approved of by masters. These were referred to as "took up," and were considered as valid as those with formal ceremonies performed by the slave owner or slave preachers. One father explained his daughter's marriage in antebellum Mississippi in the pension file.

I gave my consent and both the owners agreeing, he came on a certain night and they went to bed together and after that time he visited and cohabited with her as his wife...There was no formal ceremony, but they considered themselves husband and wife and were so regarded by others. I was married in the same way and lived with my wife until her death and had seven children. Pension file of Charles Wabbs, 240.644, 5th Regiment, RG 15, NARA.
Mollie Williams.jpg

Mollie Williams
 
We've examined various groups of women in the states of the old Southwest and we come to Mississippi. A lot of Mississippi history of women focuses on Vicksburg, but a book by Noralee Frankel, Freedom's Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi, examines the changes that the Civil War made in the lives of black women in Mississippi. She spends a lot of time around the issues of marriage, which she presents somewhat differently than many typical overviews of black women's lives.

View attachment 153441

Mollie Williams, former slave in Mississippi

Book review: Freedom’s Women; from the blog Milliken's Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory:

As we close out Black History Month, and begin Women’s History Month, this seems like a fitting time to discuss how black women in the region of Milliken’s Bend were affected by the war. One of the finest works I have read about African-American women and families is Noralee Frankel’s Freedom’s Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi.Expired Image Removed

Much of her book concerns women in the region of Vicksburg. She discusses slave marriages, which came in many forms. One couple might have been forced to be together at the insistence of the slaveholder. Another couple might have lived together on the same plantation for many decades, mutually loving each other as in any other marriage – but still not officially married because slaves did not have the power to enter into contracts. In other cases, a couple may have been separated by sale or migration. In such times, both the man and the woman, after a time, would probably “take up” with someone else. If a “married” couple decided they wanted to separate (for there was no divorce, since there was no marriage), then they simply “quit” each other.​

The rest of the review is here.

- Alan

I've only recently learned about these slave marriages, a subject that has been ignored by many. They were often stories of heartbreak because property rights of the masters trumped other considerations such as marriage, so that they were often separated to be sold . There was a lot of rationalization about slaves supposedly not being capable of having the same feelings toward a spouse as a white person does. I'm reading a book about slaves and marriage called "Bound in Bondage" by Tera W. Hunter.
 
And if you weren't born on the plantation or bought locally, they transported the slaves from Maryland and Virginia overland in Coffles.

Women (and men) got to see their children sold off as the Coffle made the rounds picking up and selling slaves all the way from the east coast to the delta.

Can you imagine, living each day not knowing if this is THE day your child/mother/sister/brother stays with you or not.

COFFLE

COFFLE Derived from the Arabic qafila, meaning "caravan," the term coffle generally was used in reference to the single column or, on some occasions, double column of slaves fastened together by leg and/or neck chains for the purpose of overland transportation. Use of the slave coffle, of course, afforded the slave trader or owner a degree of insurance against escape attempts by individual slaves.

logo-loc.png


Library of Congress > Prints & Photographs Reading Room > Prints & Photographs Online Catalog > Record

A slave-coffle passing the Capitol
  • Digital ID: (b&w film copy neg.) cph 3a06246 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a06246
  • Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2574 (b&w film copy neg.)
  • Repository: Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 20540 USA


3a06246r.jpg

http://www.loc.gov/access/web.html
 
Mississippi slave owners encouraged marriages between enslaved men and women as they felt that marriage kept slaves from running away, but they also tried to foster marriages between slaves on their own plantations. In situations where the master couldn't interfere with cross-plantation marriages, they sometimes consented to them. From the pension file of Nicholas Thomas:

Nicholas Thomas had been courting me for about a year and my white folks tried to run him off the place, as they did not want their young women to marry off the plantation, but finally when they found they could not make him stop coming they consented that we should be married.

Wednesday night was considered "Wife night," when husbands were allowed to visit and sometimes from Saturday to Monday, usually twice a week.

Slave marriages were sometimes ended by the slave owner. One historian, Herbert Gutman, looked at data from 1864 and 1865, which indicated that 18% of these marriages were ended by force. Another historian, John Blasingame, found that 39% of slave marriages were ended involuntarily by the master. Both these studies used Mississippi Freedmen's Bureau records.
 
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Book review: Freedom’s Women; from the blog Milliken's Bend: A Civil War Battle in History and Memory:

As we close out Black History Month, and begin Women’s History Month, this seems like a fitting time to discuss how black women in the region of Milliken’s Bend were affected by the war. One of the finest works I have read about African-American women and families is Noralee Frankel’s Freedom’s Women: Black Women and Families in Civil War Era Mississippi.Expired Image Removed

Much of her book concerns women in the region of Vicksburg. She discusses slave marriages, which came in many forms. One couple might have been forced to be together at the insistence of the slaveholder. Another couple might have lived together on the same plantation for many decades, mutually loving each other as in any other marriage – but still not officially married because slaves did not have the power to enter into contracts. In other cases, a couple may have been separated by sale or migration. In such times, both the man and the woman, after a time, would probably “take up” with someone else. If a “married” couple decided they wanted to separate (for there was no divorce, since there was no marriage), then they simply “quit” each other.​

The rest of the review is here.

- Alan

Thanks for sharing that, Alan. It is an excellent book.
 
I've only recently learned about these slave marriages, a subject that has been ignored by many. They were often stories of heartbreak because property rights of the masters trumped other considerations such as marriage, so that they were often separated to be sold . There was a lot of rationalization about slaves supposedly not being capable of having the same feelings toward a spouse as a white person does. I'm reading a book about slaves and marriage called "Bound in Bondage" by Tera W. Hunter.

If you have any comments from Hunter's book, they're welcomed.
 
And if you weren't born on the plantation or bought locally, they transported the slaves from Maryland and Virginia overland in Coffles.

Women (and men) got to see their children sold off as the Coffle made the rounds picking up and selling slaves all the way from the east coast to the delta.

Can you imagine, living each day not knowing if this is THE day your child/mother/sister/brother stays with you or not.

COFFLE

COFFLE Derived from the Arabic qafila, meaning "caravan," the term coffle generally was used in reference to the single column or, on some occasions, double column of slaves fastened together by leg and/or neck chains for the purpose of overland transportation. Use of the slave coffle, of course, afforded the slave trader or owner a degree of insurance against escape attempts by individual slaves.

View attachment 153516

Library of Congress > Prints & Photographs Reading Room > Prints & Photographs Online Catalog > Record

A slave-coffle passing the Capitol
  • Digital ID: (b&w film copy neg.) cph 3a06246 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3a06246
  • Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-2574 (b&w film copy neg.)
  • Repository: Library of Congress Washington, D.C. 20540 USA


View attachment 153517
Edward Ball wrote an article for Smithsonian Magazine about the "Slave Trail of Tears" with the transfer of people from the Tobacco South to the Cotton South.
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/slavery-trail-of-tears-180956968/
 
Yes, exactly and gut-wrenching. Those women only had two choices - be incredibly strong to carry on or to mentally collapse. I really can't imagine such an awful choice.

So true @NH Civil War Gal! Sometimes when I am presented with horrific stories like these I am tempted to turn away - not to read it, view it or listen to it if that be the case. Then I remind myself that if these people had to live through these horrific ordeals the least I can do is read, view or hear about them. If we turn away because these stories make us uncomfortable, sad, etc. then we are doing the victims a disservice. We can't allow ourselves to ignore the truth.
 
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