Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America

Description

Running from Bondage tells the compelling stories of enslaved women, who comprised one-third of all runaways, and the ways in which they fled or attempted to flee bondage during and after the Revolutionary War. Karen Cook Bell's enlightening and original contribution to the study of slave resistance in eighteenth-century America explores the individual and collective lives of these women and girls of diverse circumstances, while also providing details about what led them to escape. She demonstrates that there were in fact two wars being waged during the Revolutionary Era: a political revolution for independence from Great Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality in which Black women played an active role. Running from Bondage broadens and complicates how we study and teach this momentous event, one that emphasizes the chances taken by these 'Black founding mothers' and the important contributions they made to the cause of liberty. Cover Half-title page Title page Copyright page Dedication Contents List of Figures and Tables Introduction: Enslaved Women’s Fugitivity Chapter 1 “A Negro Wench Named Lucia”: Enslaved Women during the Eighteenth Century Chapter 2 “A Mulatto Woman Named Margaret”: Pre-Revolutionary Fugitive Women Chapter 3 “A Well Dressed Woman Named Jenny”: Revolutionary Black Women, 1776−1781 Chapter 4 “A Negro Woman Called Bett”: Overcoming Obstacles to Freedom in Post-Revolutionary America Chapter 5 Confronting the Power Structures: Marronage and Black Women’s Fugitivity Conclusion Appendix: Fugitive Women Émigrés to Nova Scotia and Sierra Leone Acknowledgments Bibliography Index