New from Harvard University Press:
Bound in Wedlock: Slave and Free Black Marriage in the Nineteenth Century (May 2017), by
Tera W. Hunter (Princeton University). A description from the Press:
Americans have long viewed marriage
between a white man and a white woman as a sacred union. But marriages
between African Americans have seldom been treated with the same
reverence. This discriminatory legacy traces back to centuries of
slavery, when the overwhelming majority of black married couples were
bound in servitude as well as wedlock. Though their unions were not
legally recognized, slaves commonly married, fully aware that their
marital bonds would be sustained or nullified according to the whims of
white masters.
Bound in Wedlock is the first comprehensive history of African
American marriage in the nineteenth century. Uncovering the experiences
of African American spouses in plantation records, legal and court
documents, and pension files, Tera W. Hunter reveals the myriad
ways couples adopted, adapted, revised, and rejected white Christian
ideas of marriage. Setting their own standards for conjugal
relationships, enslaved husbands and wives were creative and, of
necessity, practical in starting and supporting families under
conditions of uncertainty and cruelty.
After emancipation, white racism continued to menace black marriages.
Laws passed during Reconstruction, ostensibly to secure the civil
rights of newly freed African American citizens, were often coercive and
repressive. Informal antebellum traditions of marriage were
criminalized, and the new legal regime became a convenient tool for
plantation owners to discipline agricultural workers. Recognition of the
right of African Americans to enter into wedlock on terms equal to
whites would remain a struggle into the Jim Crow era, and its legacy
would resonate well into the twentieth century.
A few blurbs:
“Tera Hunter’s fascinating and intensive
assessment of slave and free marriages in the nineteenth century details
powerfully both the supreme importance of kinship relations and the
complex ways that the persistence of post–Civil War white supremacy
vexed and hampered African American family integrity even more directly
than legacies of slavery did.”—Nancy F. Cott
“Bound in Wedlock demonstrates that
the history of African American marriage is far more than a legacy of
slavery. Instead, it is a story at once rooted in a distinctive
collective experience, intensely personal, and at the same time bound up
in the legal, social, and cultural transformations that re-made
marriage for all Americans. Wide-ranging, learned, and deeply
researched, it is a splendid accomplishment.”—Dylan C. Penningroth
More information is available
here.
