Informal Economies and Masculine Hierarchies in Slave Communities of the US South, 1800–65

Abstract

Over the past few decades historians have dismantled the revisionist canard that enslaved people in the US South were automatically unified by their shared experiences of racial oppression, emphasising instead the multiple and overlapping identities, communities and strategies for survival enslaved people used to shape human lives in an inhumane institution. Scholars of the US South increasingly note how solidarity in slave communities was negotiated, and that enslaved people made choices and developed identities that did not correspond with simplistic notions of heroes and villains. 1 While part of a broader historiographical trend, the movement away from one-dimensional portraits of communities engaged in collective resistance to accounts stressing the flexibility of identities and the negotiations, tensions and conflict that accompanied survival in slavery has been of critical importance to discussions on enslaved masculinity. Whereas much early work focused on the perceived emasculation of the enslaved male population as a whole, or, in response to this, on the reclamation of a heroic black masculinity, historians increasingly emphasise the diverse forms of masculinity available to enslaved men in spite of bondage. 2 This article aims to develop this historiography by emphasising how masculinity could be a site of tension among the enslaved. While Edward Baptist highlighted the significance of homosocial interactions in structuring relationships in slave communities, historians of US slavery have rarely taken his lead in examining how a multiplicity of masculinities could cause problems. 3 Indeed, recent scholarly work on the topic emphasises the collective and supportive elements to enslaved manhood. Sergio Lussana, for example, recently described how an 'all-male subculture' helped unite enslaved men against an emasculatory white society. 4 Yet, although enslaved men supported one another against the oppression of slavery, they also viewed, judged and ranked one another in order to validate their gendered sense of self. Rather than simply respond to oppositional white models of masculinity, invidious comparisons and challenges from within the black community could be a key part of enslaved men's identity formation. Although historians have explored physical conflict as a means of validating manhood in slave communities, the gendered tension presented by independent economic success

Men at Home: Domesticities, Authority, Emotions and Work (Thirteenth–Twentieth Centuries)

“…The case of slaves in the American South (1800-65) analysed by David Doddington illustrates this point. 52 Undoubtedly, slaves experienced extreme constraints and dependency. Nevertheless, both men and women would frequently spend what little free time they had engaging in economic activities, mainly to provide for their families.…”