ABSTRACT
The final essay is Deborah White's article on female slaves. White makes good use of now-standard primary sources on slavery, but with an eye on what they can tell us specifically about female roles. Using these sources, as well as anthropological studies of the family in Africa and elsewhere, White argues that slave families were, “matrifocal,” in the sense that the mother-child relationship was the most important one in the slave family and that women performed vital economic roles on the plantation. She later expanded on her argument in a book, Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985).
