''They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South'' is a nonfiction history book by Stephanie Jones-Rogers. ''They Were Her Property'' is "the first extensive study of the role of Southern white women in the plantation economy and slave-market system" and disputes conventional wisdom that white women played a passive or minimal role in slaveholding. It was published by

Yale University Press Yale University Press is the university press of Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous. , Yale Universi ...

and released on February 19, 2019. For the book Jones-Rogers received the ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize and the Merle Curti Social History Award from the

Organization of American Historians The Organization of American Historians (OAH), formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S. and abroad inc ...

Synopsis

''They Were Her Property'' disputes the idea that white women did not play a significant role in slaveholding in the American south. Jones-Rogers uses primary source documents to illustrate the scope and conduct of white women slaveholders, including testimonials of formerly enslaved people archived by the

Federal Writers' Project The Federal Writers' Project (FWP) was a federal government project in the United States created to provide jobs for out-of-work writers during the Great Depression. It was part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a New Deal program. It ...

, and bills of sales for enslaved people bought and sold by white women. The author stated that around 40% of bills of sales from South Carolina in the 18th century included either a female buyer or seller. Jones-Rogers argues that white women were socialized to become plantation mistresses from girlhood through various social norms and often exacted cruelty and sexual violence onto enslaved people. The book addresses the widely-held belief that white women were gentler to enslaved people than white men, and dispels the notion of the "Jealous Mistress" who is angry that her husband has sex with enslaved women. Jones-Rogers contends that slaveholding was a key mechanism for white women to build wealth and maintain financial independence from their future husbands, and they skirted losing enslaved people to their husbands through various legal tools.

Awards and nominations

* ''Los Angeles Times'' Book Prize, ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the Un ...

'' (2019) * Merle Curti Social History Award,

(2020) *

Lincoln Prize The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, founded by the late Richard Gilder and Lewis Lehrman in partnership with Gabor Boritt, Director Emeritus of the Civil War Institute at Gettysburg College, is administered by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for America ...

finalist,

Gettysburg College Gettysburg College is a private liberal arts college in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1832, the campus is adjacent to the Gettysburg Battlefield. Gettysburg College has about 2,600 students, with roughly equal numbers of men and women. ...

and the

Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History was founded in New York City by businessmen-philanthropists Richard Gilder and Lewis E. Lehrman in 1994 to promote the study and interest in American history. The Institute serves teachers, studen ...

(2020)

Critical reception

The book received positive critical reception. In a review for ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nati ...

'', Elizabeth R. Varon wrote: "In holding slave-owning women to account, Jones-Rogers has provided a brilliant, innovative analysis of American slavery, one that sets a new standard for scholarship on the subject."

Parul Sehgal Parul Sehgal is an American literary critic based in New York, who publishes primarily in American venues. She is a former senior editor and columnist at ''The New York Times Book Review'', and was one of the team of book critics at ''The New Yo ...

stated for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'': "Jones-Rogers is a crisp and focused writer. She trains her gaze on the history and rarely considers slavery’s reverberations. They are felt on every page, however." Jeff Forret said in his review for ''Southwestern Historical Quarterly'': "Jones-Rogers offers a bold reinterpretation of the relationship between slavery and slave-owning women in the nineteenth-century South. The prose in ''They Were Her Property'' is strong and clear, containing no shortage of appalling stories of the violence and cruelty endemic to southern slavery."

Publication

References

External links

''They Were Her Property''
on

{{DEFAULTSORT:They Were Her Property 2019 non-fiction books Literature by African-American women Non-fiction books about American slavery Non-fiction books about racism Works about White Americans Yale University Press books