{"title":"Good to Us Chillun","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0009","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0009","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter focuses on ex-slaves’ positive and negative assessments of their free fathers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. African American communities celebrated caretaking fathers who invested emotionally, provided materially, and made it possible for their children to gain an education. They criticized neglectful, abusive men. The records of formerly enslaved people speak to the importance of caretaking and an ideal of paternal duty that prioritized moral masculinity and selfless, family-centered leadership. Freedmen’s efforts to parent in the post-Civil War period have remained largely invisible. Because successful Black men became targets of violence, few openly displayed their caretaking.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"433 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132386309","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"I Liked My Papa the Best","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0003","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0003","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines how enslaved men managed to influence their children despite the structural constraints of slavery, with a focus on former slaves’ commentaries on their fathers and the traits they appreciated and criticized. Because masters failed to uphold slave communities’ vision of honorable manhood, formerly enslaved people compared negligent and abusive black fathers to slaveholders, underscoring their rejection of paternalism. An examination of slave narratives produced in different times and under different circumstances reveals a robust and enduring vision of paternal duty and the ways that enslaved fathers often shaped the identity-formation of their children, even in cases of limited contact and forced separation. Enslaved fathers faced brutal conditions and agonizing choices and yet many valiantly tried to implement their understanding of paternal duty and honor.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"66 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116942715","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tuckey Buzzard Lay Me","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter examines sexual exploitation and violence in the antebellum South and what it meant for an enslaved person to have a white father. Evaluations of white fathers varied considerably depending on how that father treated his illegitimate offspring, how slave communities treated mixed-race children (which also varied), and an individual’s sense of identity, which was tied to these other factors. Biracial children at times expressed admiration for the few white fathers who openly acknowledged their children and provided freedom and education. They tended to be more ambivalent about white fathers who offered a privileged status on the plantation but not freedom. African American communities expressed particular disdain for white fathers who violated paternal duty by abusing or selling their own children. Reactions to white fathers highlight slaves and former slaves’ consistent notions of paternal duty. African American communities understood that white people had a monopoly on concrete power, but that did not mean they had honor.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121854113","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The God Part of Him","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the considerable, often insurmountable, constraints slavery placed on family and fatherhood, including sexual exploitation, forced pairing, breeding, and separation. Despite their adaptations, including abroad marriages and multilocal kin networks, enslaved people faced encumbered parenting regardless of their household arrangements. Although the emasculation of slavery imposed perverse dilemmas, enslaved men endeavored to act as caretakers and retained a sense of self, humanity, and manhood through love of family, religious faith, and their own definition of honor.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"95 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132060240","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"My Children Is My Own","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter considers the lives of African American fathers and children in freedom prior to, during, and after the Civil War and emancipation. Ongoing challenges, including postwar violence and abusive labor practices, undermined patriarchal status and underscore the ways in which normative definitions of fatherhood and family limit a full understanding of the African American experience. Although the promise of emancipation remained incomplete, caretaking fathers used their newfound freedom to reconstitute their families and attempt to assert their paternal rights.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"123296996","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"This Great Object of My Life","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0005","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0005","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores enslaved men’s attempts to provide for their families, focusing on men who purchased or endeavored to purchase freedom for themselves and their family members. The second half of the chapter looks at enslaved men who became fugitives, the painful decision some made to run away and leave loved ones behind, and their commentary on family once free. In failure and in the infrequent cases of success, former slaves’ words, choices, and actions as they sought to free self and family underscored the centrality of kinship and slave communities’ definition of paternal duty.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"10 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127372328","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Blasphemous Doctrine for a Slave to Teach","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter discusses enslaved men’s attempts to provision their families materially, emotionally, and spiritually. Often unable to openly exhibit the hallmarks of nineteenth century masculinity, to provide and protect, enslaved men found covert ways to support and influence their loved ones through ideological provisioning, a form of subtle resistance. Slaveholders could never entirely control the exchange of cultural goods and ideas, and caretaking fathers regularly couched their authority in the mantle of religious counsel.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"61 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132256194","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Mortifications Peculiarly Their Own","authors":"Libra R. Hilde","doi":"10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5149/northcarolina/9781469660677.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"This chapter explores the sexual exploitation of slavery and enslaved women’s feelings towards children born of rape and concubinage and their reactions to the white fathers of their children. A white man who sold his own offspring likely sold his daughters into the sex trade, underscoring how deeply imbedded rape was in the market economy and in the role of white planters as fathers.The act of rape connected the private realm of the southern home to the market. Sexual exploitation complicated identity and family formation in the slave South and could strengthen children’s identification with their enslaved mothers, or in the rare cases when white men offered preferential treatment to their mixed-race children, could erase Black mothers.","PeriodicalId":444769,"journal":{"name":"Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-10-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128500876","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}