ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the black lone mother in Romantic-era poetry, abolitionist verse, and historical documents that register her own words. It argues that while the poets emphasized the black mother's singleness, the historical documents, particularly those that allow the black lone mother to tell her own tale, reveal a different story: here she is anything but alone. The Hospital's social emphasis on rehabilitating lone mothers not only happened just as the Romantic era was getting its footing, it coincided with a new concept of bourgeois motherhood, according to historians of the family. Industrial practices uprooted rural families from their land, the workplace and the dwelling place, which had been one unit, were separate spaces. Anti-slavery verse stresses the black mother's singleness, and along with it her despair and destruction, with the underlying implication that she is an example of failed domesticity. Samson Wood letters demonstrate how black lone mothers' counter-culture was dependent upon kinship bonds, family strength, and community action.