Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
About the Author
Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers is associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the winner of the 2013 Lerner-Scott Prize for best doctoral dissertation in U. S. women's history.
Works by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South (2019) 659 copies, 10 reviews
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Jones-Rogers, Stephanie E.
- Other names
- Jones-Rogers, Stephanie
- Birthdate
- 19??
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Rutgers University (BA|MA Psychology)
- Occupations
- assistant professor
Associate Professor of History - Awards and honors
- Lerner-Scott Prize
- Agent
- McKinnon, Tanya
- Nationality
- USA
- Map Location
- USA
Members
Reviews
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
This interesting and extremely valuable history, recently published, explores the role of women in the slave system and economy of the southern U.S. during the centuries before the Civil War. Jones-Rogers uses extensive research in contemporary newspaper accounts, WPA History Project testimony of formerly enslaved people and court records as well to show that many women in the South owned slaves of their own and were simply subservient to their husbands when it came to slave owning and show more economic considerations of all sorts. Women were often "left" slaves in their parents' wills and were also given slaves as "gifts" by their parents when they married. Furthermore, many couples signed what we'd now called pre-nuptual agreements stipulating that wives would retain complete control of their own slaves and all other financial interests. Jones-Rogers tours the multi-faceted world of slave owning and shows that women were often mens' equals when it came to wheeling and dealing for profit, and also for savagery in their treatment of their enslaved workers. The work is important particularly, I think, in that it is an detailed treatment of the pervasive nature of the slave system in the American south: all whites took part, not just men, in all facets of the system.
I found it interesting and enlightening that Jones-Rogers refers most often to "enslaved persons" rather than to "slaves." I've never seen this before, but I found it an effective way of making an important point. "Enslaved person" clearly expresses the point that we are referring to people who have been enslaved by someone else. There is action, violent, horrible action, involved. Perhaps this locution is more widespread than I realize, but it seems like it's the first time I've come across it.
There are times in the book where the examples Jones-Rogers uses become more than a little repetitive to read. It's not something I would fault her for at all. It crucial that she establish that the research behind her thesis is extensive, to ensure that we are convinced. So there were times when I was ready for the narrative to move along, but I understood the reasons for the structure Jones-Rogers employed. I think this history all in all is a crucial building block for a serious modern-day understanding of American slavery. show less
I found it interesting and enlightening that Jones-Rogers refers most often to "enslaved persons" rather than to "slaves." I've never seen this before, but I found it an effective way of making an important point. "Enslaved person" clearly expresses the point that we are referring to people who have been enslaved by someone else. There is action, violent, horrible action, involved. Perhaps this locution is more widespread than I realize, but it seems like it's the first time I've come across it.
There are times in the book where the examples Jones-Rogers uses become more than a little repetitive to read. It's not something I would fault her for at all. It crucial that she establish that the research behind her thesis is extensive, to ensure that we are convinced. So there were times when I was ready for the narrative to move along, but I understood the reasons for the structure Jones-Rogers employed. I think this history all in all is a crucial building block for a serious modern-day understanding of American slavery. show less
They were her property : white women as slave owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
Author Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers powerfully challenges the often-held belief that white women willingly gave their husbands charge of their property, including slaves. Drawing from slave narratives, court records, plantation records, and other sources, she demonstrates white women actively participated in slave management, often usurping their husband's authority when it came to slaves she owned prior to the marriage or their descendants. She shows the women's desire to keep their property show more at a high value by preventing cruelty, but also the desire of some to actively participate in disciplinary actions. She finally moves past the rather dense topic of slave discipline to areas such as using slaves as wet nurses, actively participating in slave markets, and their concern for a livelihood when slaves were emanicipated. The academic writing style creates a very dense narrative in many places. The author spent too much time describing the brutality of slave punishments in the book's first half. It is, however, an important work in African-American studies. show less
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
I got about 40% through the book, but I have to DNF it. I have two specific issues with it. The first is the entrenched paradigm of ownership that really underlies the entire book. It begins with the terminology. The author is careful to use the current term “enslaved people” where previous generations would have used “slaves.” Fine, good start. But then she consistently talks about people “owning” other people, in just such terms. Occasionally, this is necessary, to be clear show more about why a particular slaveholder takes a certain stance or makes a certain statement. But just as often, it would be enlightening to begin from the perspective that slaveholding was a wretched abomination, rather than an abstract question of property rights.
Take passages like these, discussing how women occasionally had to battle with their own families over the question of the people they held in slavery:
Those aren’t outlying cases, and in the end it isn’t just a question of language. The root problem is that the entire question is only ever really considered—at least through the introduction and first three chapters, at which point I quit reading—from the perspective of enslavers themselves. When we get anything from the perspective of someone held in slavery, it is almost exclusively to reinforce a preceding statement from the point of view of the enslaver, or else simply to support the contention that it was in fact the woman of the slaveholding household who exercised authority in some situation or another.
Which brings me to my second point. This book spends an inordinate amount of time and energy vigorously defending the notion that women could be slaveholders, too. Sometimes on their own, sometimes in concert with their husbands, sometimes in contention with their husbands. My problem is that I would have granted that premise before ever starting the book, but here it’s treated as a revelatory—even controversial—conclusion. I don’t find it difficult to accept, so I am not moved by the repeated marshaling of evidence in support of it.
There’s just not much of value here, and what there is is just remarkably frustrating. I’ll admit that I may have missed something in the last 60% that I skipped. But I didn’t see much changing, and I couldn’t bring myself to keep wading through it as it was. show less
Take passages like these, discussing how women occasionally had to battle with their own families over the question of the people they held in slavery:
On more than a few occasions, slave-owning women denied these privileges to spouses, kin, and community members and exercised complete control over the enslaved people they owned. Court records also documented the experiences of typical, not simply elite, slave-owning women, litigants who owned fewer than ten slaves. The majority, in fact, owned only one or two.or
Furthermore, their children often proved to be the instigators of legal, yet underhanded, attempts to take these women’s slaves from them. These women faced extraordinary challenges when they held legal title to property. In addition to husbands, married women’s fathers, brothers, sons, and nephews often attempted to infringe upon their property rights.It can be easy to lose sight of the fact that these people are quarreling over how to enslave autonomous human beings. The book treats these interfamilial relationships among the slaveholding class as though they were not just the paramount concern, but nearly the only concern.
Those aren’t outlying cases, and in the end it isn’t just a question of language. The root problem is that the entire question is only ever really considered—at least through the introduction and first three chapters, at which point I quit reading—from the perspective of enslavers themselves. When we get anything from the perspective of someone held in slavery, it is almost exclusively to reinforce a preceding statement from the point of view of the enslaver, or else simply to support the contention that it was in fact the woman of the slaveholding household who exercised authority in some situation or another.
Which brings me to my second point. This book spends an inordinate amount of time and energy vigorously defending the notion that women could be slaveholders, too. Sometimes on their own, sometimes in concert with their husbands, sometimes in contention with their husbands. My problem is that I would have granted that premise before ever starting the book, but here it’s treated as a revelatory—even controversial—conclusion. I don’t find it difficult to accept, so I am not moved by the repeated marshaling of evidence in support of it.
There’s just not much of value here, and what there is is just remarkably frustrating. I’ll admit that I may have missed something in the last 60% that I skipped. But I didn’t see much changing, and I couldn’t bring myself to keep wading through it as it was. show less
They were her property : white women as slave owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers
This would make a fantastic article, especially as contrasted to narratives excusing white women from their implication in the slave economy. Jones-Rogers decisively shows, from a variety of sources including the accounts of formerly enslaved people, that white women were regularly treated by other whites as owners of human property; demanded the deference owed to them as owners both from enslaved people and from other whites; inflicted violence on enslaved people, including physical and show more family separation; and did every other thing that male enslavers did (other than directly sexually abuse enslaved people, though some white women owned brothels and otherwise facilitated the rape of enslaved women, including by encouraging it in order to produce more human capital). When one is challenging a dominant narrative, it can make sense to over-prove the thesis, but since I was perfectly ready to believe it all, it seemed over-long as a book; a lot of the examples were horribly similar. show less
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