ABSTRACT
Our imaginations often depict slaves in the antebellum South trudging through elds in drab, rough, monochromatic attire. Barefoot and ragged, these imaginary slaves project a picture of uniformity and mindless drudgery. The research presented in the following pages seeks to reveal the complexities surrounding clothing and slave life in the South by examining a variety of sources in combination. Clothing functioned in multi-faceted ways across the antebellum United States to racialize and engender dierence and to oppress a variety of people through the visual signs and cues of the fashion system. Enslaved people resisted race-based slavery by individualizing their appearance when working and when playing, but they were ultimately unsuccessful in resisting their exclusion from the race-based American fashion system.
