III
To Choose Again, Freely
The first years of freedom held incredible pathos for Afro-Americans. For
Black women especially, the postbellum period was one for critical de-
cisions—concerning their children, their men, their role in the feminist and
racial struggles that unfolded so dramatically in these years. Those de-
cisions—and the convictions behind them—often revealed a profound
understanding of the relationship between their personal and political
strivings.
Among the first and perhaps most important decisions that freedmen
and women made was the reestablishment of family ties, as historian
Herbert Gutman points out. Even in a world where slavery no longer exis-
ted, Blacks faced a variety of obstacles. Postbellum apprenticeship laws,
for example, allowed former owners to seize Black children if the courts
found that it would be “better for the habits and comfort of the child that
it should be bound as an apprentice for some white person.”1 In Maryland
alone, an estimated ten thousand children were apprenticed, despite the
objections of parents. “Not a day passes,” said an officer of the Annapolis
Freedmen’s Bureau, “but my office is visited by some poor woman who
has walked perhaps ten or twenty miles to…try to procure the release of
her children taken forcibly away from her and held to all intents and pur-
poses in slavery.”2
The dislocations of war required determined efforts to find
spouses—efforts freed Blacks were willing to make, as a Union commander
in Mississippi observed. Blacks “whose wives and husbands the rebels had
driven off,” he said, “firmly refused to form new connections and declared
their purpose to keep faith to absent ones.”3 Men and women who found
each other, or who were fortunate enough not to have been separated by
war and slavery, married or remarried under the official auspices of the
Freedmen’s Bureau—as in the case of Ida Wells’s parents. Observers docu-
mented the vivid scene
,54 / Paula Giddings
of masses of Blacks coming to the Bureau offices, sometimes seventy couples
at a time, to reaffirm their commitment to each other.
To secure their families, freed couples were making every attempt to
stabilize their lives. When the abolitionist Frances Ellen Harper toured the
South after the War, she reported that the former slaves “were beginning
to get homes for themselves…and depositing money in the bank…. They
have hundreds of homes in Kentucky.”4 The Freedmen’s Bureau was redis-
tributing land and providing low-interest loans for former slaves. It was
overseeing labor contracts between Blacks and White employers. For a
moment—and it was just a moment—it seemed that former slaves would
be able to lead their lives like other Americans. But in the end such a life
would not be possible. For the Black woman had invented herself, and the
challenges of the postwar years required the same kind of strength and
independence culled in previous times.
History had not instilled in Afro-American women “the spirit of subor-
dination to masculine authority by either economic necessity or tradition,”
remarked Howard University sociologist E. Franklin Frazier in The Negro
Family in the United States.5 This applied to Black women of all classes, in
freedom and in slavery.
In slavery, Frazier wrote, “As a worker and free agent, except where the
master’s will was concerned, [Black women] developed a spirit of independ-
ence and a keen sense of personal rights.”6 Of course every slave was a
worker and a free agent except where the master’s will was concerned. What
Frazier really seems to be saying is that the Black woman exercised inde-
pendence and personal rights vis-à-vis her Black husband. A more precise
statement may be that slave women maintained their authority over the
domestic domain—as women have traditionally done—while Black men
had no authority over the traditional male spheres of influence. When some
figures, such as mammies on the large plantations, were able to extend
their domain to the master’s house, they often became the “broker” between
the slave community and Whites—thus increasing the Black woman’s in-
fluence. The Black woman’s “power,” however, still derived from her
functionalist roles rather than from influence in the traditional male do-
mains. But it was power nonetheless.
Among free Blacks, male authority was diminished, in many cases, by
the inability of a man to support and protect his family. In the North, abol-
ition coincided with the influx of European immi-
, When and Where I Enter / 55
grants, who replaced Black men in occupations they had traditionally held.
Consequently, Black wives were forced to work, most of them as washer-
women, whose meager incomes not only saved many families from “utter
destruction,” in historian Carter T. Woodson’s words, but provided capital
for struggling Black businessmen in the early nineteenth century. Such
economic circumstances made male domination difficult.
Among more affluent Blacks, many of whom were involved in the abol-
itionist struggle, the woman’s social role was more traditional. Many of
the activist Black families, like the Fortens, the Pauls, the Remonds, the
Purvises, and others, were organized along patriarchal lines. However,
their struggle for racial equality sanctioned the nontraditional political
activities and education of their wives, sisters, and daughters. Black women
like Sarah Remond; Margaretta, Sarah, Harriet, and Charlotte Forten; Susan
Paul, and others were well educated and encouraged to participate in ab-
olitionist and other progressive organizations. Men like James Forten, Sr.,
and his son James Jr. believed that the women’s role in the abolitionist
struggle was too important for them to be relegated to their homes. In ad-
dition to needing all the help they could get, many Black male activists
believed in the fundamental equality of the sexes. “Woman is not a mere
dependent of man,” averred Robert Purvis, son-in-law of the senior Forten.
“The relation is perfectly reciprocal. God has given to both man and woman
the same intellectual capacities, and made them subject to the same moral
argument.”7 It was a stunning position for the early nineteenth century.
There is no question that there was greater acceptance among Black men
of women in activist roles than there was in the broader society. This did
not mean that sexual equality always prevailed—at home or in the political
arena. Black women headed no major community organizations, nor were
they regional representatives at national conventions. And although the
participation of Black women in those organizations and conventions was
more readily accepted than that of their White counterparts—especially
after the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848—occasional incidents did occur.
In 1849 at a Black convention in Ohio, Black women, led by Jane P. Merritt,
threatened to boycott the meetings if they were not given a more substantial
voice in the proceedings. At an 1855 convention in Philadelphia, Mary Ann
Shadd Cary was admitted only after a spirited debate in which she took
part.8 Both women were active in the Underground Railroad, so one
To Choose Again, Freely
The first years of freedom held incredible pathos for Afro-Americans. For
Black women especially, the postbellum period was one for critical de-
cisions—concerning their children, their men, their role in the feminist and
racial struggles that unfolded so dramatically in these years. Those de-
cisions—and the convictions behind them—often revealed a profound
understanding of the relationship between their personal and political
strivings.
Among the first and perhaps most important decisions that freedmen
and women made was the reestablishment of family ties, as historian
Herbert Gutman points out. Even in a world where slavery no longer exis-
ted, Blacks faced a variety of obstacles. Postbellum apprenticeship laws,
for example, allowed former owners to seize Black children if the courts
found that it would be “better for the habits and comfort of the child that
it should be bound as an apprentice for some white person.”1 In Maryland
alone, an estimated ten thousand children were apprenticed, despite the
objections of parents. “Not a day passes,” said an officer of the Annapolis
Freedmen’s Bureau, “but my office is visited by some poor woman who
has walked perhaps ten or twenty miles to…try to procure the release of
her children taken forcibly away from her and held to all intents and pur-
poses in slavery.”2
The dislocations of war required determined efforts to find
spouses—efforts freed Blacks were willing to make, as a Union commander
in Mississippi observed. Blacks “whose wives and husbands the rebels had
driven off,” he said, “firmly refused to form new connections and declared
their purpose to keep faith to absent ones.”3 Men and women who found
each other, or who were fortunate enough not to have been separated by
war and slavery, married or remarried under the official auspices of the
Freedmen’s Bureau—as in the case of Ida Wells’s parents. Observers docu-
mented the vivid scene
,54 / Paula Giddings
of masses of Blacks coming to the Bureau offices, sometimes seventy couples
at a time, to reaffirm their commitment to each other.
To secure their families, freed couples were making every attempt to
stabilize their lives. When the abolitionist Frances Ellen Harper toured the
South after the War, she reported that the former slaves “were beginning
to get homes for themselves…and depositing money in the bank…. They
have hundreds of homes in Kentucky.”4 The Freedmen’s Bureau was redis-
tributing land and providing low-interest loans for former slaves. It was
overseeing labor contracts between Blacks and White employers. For a
moment—and it was just a moment—it seemed that former slaves would
be able to lead their lives like other Americans. But in the end such a life
would not be possible. For the Black woman had invented herself, and the
challenges of the postwar years required the same kind of strength and
independence culled in previous times.
History had not instilled in Afro-American women “the spirit of subor-
dination to masculine authority by either economic necessity or tradition,”
remarked Howard University sociologist E. Franklin Frazier in The Negro
Family in the United States.5 This applied to Black women of all classes, in
freedom and in slavery.
In slavery, Frazier wrote, “As a worker and free agent, except where the
master’s will was concerned, [Black women] developed a spirit of independ-
ence and a keen sense of personal rights.”6 Of course every slave was a
worker and a free agent except where the master’s will was concerned. What
Frazier really seems to be saying is that the Black woman exercised inde-
pendence and personal rights vis-à-vis her Black husband. A more precise
statement may be that slave women maintained their authority over the
domestic domain—as women have traditionally done—while Black men
had no authority over the traditional male spheres of influence. When some
figures, such as mammies on the large plantations, were able to extend
their domain to the master’s house, they often became the “broker” between
the slave community and Whites—thus increasing the Black woman’s in-
fluence. The Black woman’s “power,” however, still derived from her
functionalist roles rather than from influence in the traditional male do-
mains. But it was power nonetheless.
Among free Blacks, male authority was diminished, in many cases, by
the inability of a man to support and protect his family. In the North, abol-
ition coincided with the influx of European immi-
, When and Where I Enter / 55
grants, who replaced Black men in occupations they had traditionally held.
Consequently, Black wives were forced to work, most of them as washer-
women, whose meager incomes not only saved many families from “utter
destruction,” in historian Carter T. Woodson’s words, but provided capital
for struggling Black businessmen in the early nineteenth century. Such
economic circumstances made male domination difficult.
Among more affluent Blacks, many of whom were involved in the abol-
itionist struggle, the woman’s social role was more traditional. Many of
the activist Black families, like the Fortens, the Pauls, the Remonds, the
Purvises, and others, were organized along patriarchal lines. However,
their struggle for racial equality sanctioned the nontraditional political
activities and education of their wives, sisters, and daughters. Black women
like Sarah Remond; Margaretta, Sarah, Harriet, and Charlotte Forten; Susan
Paul, and others were well educated and encouraged to participate in ab-
olitionist and other progressive organizations. Men like James Forten, Sr.,
and his son James Jr. believed that the women’s role in the abolitionist
struggle was too important for them to be relegated to their homes. In ad-
dition to needing all the help they could get, many Black male activists
believed in the fundamental equality of the sexes. “Woman is not a mere
dependent of man,” averred Robert Purvis, son-in-law of the senior Forten.
“The relation is perfectly reciprocal. God has given to both man and woman
the same intellectual capacities, and made them subject to the same moral
argument.”7 It was a stunning position for the early nineteenth century.
There is no question that there was greater acceptance among Black men
of women in activist roles than there was in the broader society. This did
not mean that sexual equality always prevailed—at home or in the political
arena. Black women headed no major community organizations, nor were
they regional representatives at national conventions. And although the
participation of Black women in those organizations and conventions was
more readily accepted than that of their White counterparts—especially
after the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848—occasional incidents did occur.
In 1849 at a Black convention in Ohio, Black women, led by Jane P. Merritt,
threatened to boycott the meetings if they were not given a more substantial
voice in the proceedings. At an 1855 convention in Philadelphia, Mary Ann
Shadd Cary was admitted only after a spirited debate in which she took
part.8 Both women were active in the Underground Railroad, so one
