History of Women in the United States: Volume 5/1 The Intersection of Work and Family Life [Reprint 2012 ed.] 9783110968835, 9783598414596

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HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Historical Articles on Women's Lives and Activities Edited by Nancy F. Cott Series ISBN 3-598-41454-4 1.

Theory and Method in Women's History ISBN 3-598-41455-2 Parti ISBN 3-598-41477-3 Part 2

2.

Household Constitution and Family Relationships ISBN 3-598-41456-0

3.

4.

Domestic Relations and Law ISBN 3-598-41457-9 Domestic Ideology and Domestic Work ISBN 3-598-41458-7 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41475-7 Part 2

11. Women's Bodies: Health and Childbirth ISBN 3-598-41465-X 12. Education ISBN 3-598-41466-8 13. Religion ISBN 3-598-41467-6 14. Intercultural and Interracial Relations ISBN 3-598-41468-4 15. Women and War ISBN 3-598-41469-2

5.

The Intersection of Work and Family Life ISBN 3-598-41459-5 Parti ISBN 3-598-41476-5 Part 2

16. Women Together: Organizational Life ISBN 3-598-41470-6

6.

Working on the Land ISBN 3-598-41460-9

17. Social and Moral Reform ISBN 3-598-41471-4 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41695-4 Part 2

7.

Industrial Wage Work ISBN 3-598-41461-7 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41693-8 Part 2

18. Women and Politics ISBN 3-598-41472-2 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41697-0 Part 2

8.

Professional and White-Collar Employments ISBN 3-598-41462-5 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41694-6 Part 2

19. Woman Suffrage ISBN 3-598^1473-0 Part 1 ISBN 3-598-41696-2 Part 2

9.

Prostitution ISBN 3-598-41463-3

20. Feminist Struggles for Sex Equality ISBN 3-598-41474-9

10. Sexuality and Sexual Behavior ISBN 3-598-41464-1

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES Historical Articles on Women's Lives and Activities

5

•

The Intersection of Work and Family Life

PART Ι

Edited with an Introduction by

Nancy F. Cott Yale University

K G · Saur Munich · London · New York · Paris 1992

Publisher's Note The articles and chapters which comprise this collection originally appeared in a wide variety of publications and are reproduced here in facsimile from the highest quality offprints and photocopies available. The reader will notice some occasional marginal shading and text-curl common to photocopying from tightly bound volumes. Every attempt has been made to correct or minimize this effect. Copyright information for articles reproduced in this collection appears at the end of this volume. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Pubiication Data History of women in the United States : historical articles on women's lives and activities / edited with an introduction by Nancy F. Cott. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and indexes. Contents: 1. Theory and method in women's history - 2. Household constitution and family relationships — 3. Domestic relations and law — 4. Domestic ideology and domestic work - 5. The intersection of work and family life - 6. Working on the l a n d - 7 . Industrial wage w o r k - 8. Professional and white-collar employments— 9. Prostitution --10. Sexuality and sexual behavior ~ 11. Women's bodies - 12. Education — 13. Religion — 14. Intercultural and interracial relations ~ 15. Women and war ~ 16. Women together - 17. Social and moral reform - 18. Women and politics 19. Women suffrage — 20. Feminist struggles for sex equality. ISBN 3-598-41454-4 (set) 1. Women-United States-History. 2. Women-United States-Social conditions. I. Cott, Nancy F. HQ1410.H57 1992 305.4Ό973—dc20 92-16765 CIP

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP - Einheitsaufhahme History of women in the United States: historical articles on women's lives and activities / ed. with an introd, by Nancy F. Cott. - Munich ; London ; New York ; Paris : Saur. ISBN 3-598-41454-4 NE: Cott, Nancy F. (Hrsg.) Vol. 5. The intersection of work and family life. PL 1. - (1992) ISBN 3-598-41459-5 © Printed on acid-free paper/Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier All Rights Strictly Reserved/Alle Rechte vorbehalten K.G.Saur Verlag GmbH & Co. KG, Munich 1992 A Reed Reference Publishing Company Printed in the United States of America Printed/Bound by Edwards Brothers Incorporated, Ann Arbor ISBN 3-598-41459-5 (vol. 5/part 1) ISBN 3-598-41454-4 (series)

Contents Series Preface

ix

Introduction

jci Part 1

Economic Organization and the Position of Women among the Iroquois JUDITH K. BROWN

3

Economic Development and Native American Women in the Early Nineteenth Century MARY C. WRIGHT

20

The Lady and the Mill Girl: Changes in the Status of Women in the Age of Jackson GERDA LERNER

32

Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves ANGELA DAVIS

44

"My Mother was Much of a Woman": Black Women, Work, and the Family under Slavery JACQUELINE JONES

58

Free Black Women and the Question of Matriarchy: Petersburg, Virginia, 1784-1820 SUZANNE LEBSOCK 93 Two Worlds in One: Work and Family ELIZABETH H. PLECK

115

The Life Cycles and Household Structure of American Ethnic Groups: Irish, Germans, and Native-bom Whites in Buffalo, New York, 1855 LAURENCE A. GLASCO 133 Fertility and Marriage in a Nineteenth-Century Industrial City: Philadelphia, 1850-1880 MICHAEL R. HAINES

159

Reconceptualizing Family, Work and Labor Organizing: Working Women in Troy, 1860-1890 CAROLE TURBIN

167

Working-Class Women in the Gilded Age: Factory, Community and Family Life among Cohoes, New York, Cotton Workers DANIEL J. WALKOWITZ

183

Homesteading in Northeastern Colorado, 1873-1920: Sex Roles and Women's Experience KATHERINE HARRIS

210

The Chicana in American History: The Mexican Women of El Paso, 1880-1920—A Case Study MARIO T. GARCIA

224

Work and the Family in Black Atlanta, 1880 WILLIAM HARRIS

247

Family Time and Industrial Time: Family and Work in a Planned Corporation Town, 1900-1924 TAMARA Κ. HAREVEN

259

Imperfect Unions: Class and Gender in Cripple Creek, 1894-1904 ELIZABETH JAMESON

284

A Flexible Tradition: South Italian Immigrants Confront a New Work Experience VIRGINIA YANS-McLAUGHLIN

313

New Immigrant Women at Work: Italians and Jews in New York City, 1880-1905 THOMAS KESSNER and BETTY BOYD CAROLI

330

Beyond the Stereotype: A New Look at the Immigrant Woman, 1880-1924 MAXINE S. SELLER

343

Urbanization without Breakdown: Italian, Jewish, and Slavic Immigrant Women in Pittsburgh, 1900-1945 CORINNE AZEN KRAUSE 355

Part 2 The Historical Problem of the Family Wage: The Ford Motor Company and the Five Dollar Day MARTHA MAY

371

Rural Push and Urban Pull: Work and Family Experiences of Older Black Women in Southern Cities, 1880-1900 JANICE L. REIFF, MICHEL R. DAHLIN, and DANIEL SCOTT SMITH

397

Our Own Kind: Family and Community Networks JUDITH E. SMITH

407

The "Good Managers": Married Working Class Women and Family Budget Studies, 1895-1915 MARTHA MAY

429

The Female Life Cycle and the Measure of Jewish Social Change: Portland, Oregon, 1880-1930 WILLIAM TOLL

451

The Women's March: Miners, Family, and Community in Pittsburg, Kansas, 1921-1922 ANN SCHOFIELD

475

Cotton Mill People: Work, Community, and Protest in the Textile South, 1880-1940 JACQUELYN DOWD HALL, ROBERT KORSTAD, and JAMES LELOUDIS

497

Beyond the Family Economy: Black and White Working-Class Women during the Great Depression LOIS RITA HELMBOLD

539

The Economics of Middle-Income Family Life: Working Women during the Great Depression WINIFRED D. WANDERSEE BOLIN

566

Working after Childbearing in Modern America MARY E. COOKINGHAM

581

A Promise Fulfilled: Mexican Cannery Workers in Southern California VICKI L.RUIZ The Impact of "Sun Belt Industrialization" on Chicanas PATRICIA ZAVELLA

601 625

Copyright Information

639

Index

645

Series Preface In the space of one generation, women's history has become the fastest-growing area of scholarship in U.S. history. Since the resurgence of feminism in the late 1960s and 1970s, insistent questions about the historical meanings of "woman's place" have sowed and reaped a garden of scholarship. Where scholarly works used to be bare of mention of women, academic enterprise has now produced a vigorous growth of books and articles, bringing to light diverse women of every region, race, class and age. This research is marked by a renovating intent that refuses to accept as "human" history a history of men. Interest is lively and debate is stimulating and sought after attendance at the Berkshire Conference on the History of Women rivals the size of the annual convention of the American Historical Association. While books in women's history are daily increasing in numbers and strength, as in any fast-developing field the scholarly literature in the form of articles is most expansive and up-to-the-minute. All the history journals now publish articles on women's work, domestic settings, family relations, household matters, female politics and organizations and so forth, and new journals have sprung into being to concentrate (Mi such topics. Women's historians publish in numerous regional and thematic history journals as well as in feminist outlets and in journals of other social science disciplines. This soles brings together a collection of outstanding articles from the field, almost all written in the past twenty years and more than half published during the 1980s. It brings together, in volumes organized by topic, essays otherwise widely disposed. These volumes reprint only articles that originally appeared in journals, not chapters of books; review articles are not included. Articles have been chosen for overall quality and for range. Each one was chosen for one or more of the following reasons: because it is the standard authority on its subject matter; represents an important statement on a topic by a recognized scholar, presages an important book to come; provides a fust look at new evidence or new methods; or opens an untapped area or new controversy. Older articles have been reprinted if their data or interpretation have not been surpassed or if they marked an important stage in the historiography, even if since superseded. The historical coverage of the series extends from the Revolutionary era to the 1960s. The articles themselves are dated from the 1940s through 1988. Volumes are organized by topic rather than time period. Within each volume, the ix

χ

SERIES PREFACE

articles are ordered chronologically (with respect to substance), so that the whole can be read as an historical overview. The only exception to this ordering principle is volume 1, on Theory and Method, in which the contents are arranged in order of publication. Within each volume there is an attempt to include articles on as diverse kinds of women as possible. None of the volume topics is regionally or racially defined; rather, all volumes are topically designed so as to afford views of women's work, family lives, and public activities which cut across races and regions. Any volume in the series stands on its own, supplying as full a treatment of a designated subject matter as the scholarly literature will provide. Several groupings of volumes also make sense; that is, volumes 2 through 5 all center around domestic and family matters; volumes S through 9 consider other varieties of women's work; volumes 9 through 11 concern uses and abuses of women's bodies; volumes 12 through 14 look at major aspects of socialization; and volumes IS through 20 include organizational and political efforts of many sorts. As a whole, the series displays in all its range the vitality of the field of women's history. Aside from imbuing U.S. history with new vision, scholarship in this area has informed, and should continue to inform, current public debate on issues from parental leave to the nuclear freeze. By bringing historical articles together under topical headings, these volumes both represent accurately the shape of historical controversy (or consensus) on given issues and make historians' findings most conveniently available for current reference.

Introduction Today, with the majority of adult women in the paid labor force, the issue of women's combination of work and family life-work and motherhood, in particular-is much in the news, as though it were an unprecedented phenomenon. Historians of women have shown, however, that women's combination of productive economic activity and childrearing has been more the norm than the exception in past time; only a small stratum of prosperous women, for a relatively shot period of years in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, were ever able to devote themselves wholly to child care and housekeeping. What is unprecedented in our own time is the extent to which women perform their work outside of the household rather than in or around it, for a wage or salary rather than for barter or "in-kind" services. The articles in this volume detail how women of various ethnic and racial groups have managed the necessary combination of economic and familial tasks, in both rural and urban settings. In rural society the intersection of women's work with their family responsibilities was taken for granted. In the agricultural setting, both women's and men's work revolved around the household and fields; childrearing did not separate itself out as a separate task. Examples from Native American women to black slaves in the Old South to homesteading families in late nineteenth century Colorado make that clear. Of course for slaves, circumstances were much harsher and not under their own control: whether a woman had family members with her was a matter of the master's ability to buy and sell her and her kindred. On plantations where slave families were intact, however, a woman's work was of two sorts: for the master, and for her own kin. Many narratives relate slave women's bringing their nursing babies to the cotton fields with them, but slave children once old enough to do useful work were put to use by the master. It was in the latter kind of work-cooking, mending, quilting, nursing in the slave quarters—that black women's interweaving of family responsibility with necessary labor was most visible, on the general model of rural women's work that black women would also manifest after emancipation. Not only agricultural production but most crafts were, in the era before industrialization, organized around the household: there, in the large hall or perhaps in an adjoining shop the master craftsman, journeymen and apprentices worked, women and children nearby or participating in part. The sense of separation of "work" from "home" did not come about until, in fact, towns and

xi

xii

INTRODUCTION

cities were numerous enough and commercial development sufficient to create worksites separate from homes, where numerous employees worked. This reorganization of work, occurring gradually over a long period of time, and scattered in location, was transformative enough to create a very great awareness of change among those forwarding it, participants in urbanization and commercialization. One major way that individuals understood, rationalized and accepted the change was in terms of gender roles: the separation of work from home was seen as appropriate if the home was understood as woman's place, the world of work man's. This ideological construction of the differences between "work" and "home," a construction abuilding since the 1820s, arose in part from realistic observation among prosperous middle-class men and women, in whose families one male earner in business or profession sufficed to support the rest of the family. But it was a realistic observation for only a small portion of the population when it began, and for a century or more afterward. It is ironic, and more than ironic, that in the same decade when publicists first championed the home as a haven from the world of work and loudly glorified the woman at home as mankind's moral savior, large numbers of girls and young women were drawn out of their domestic occupations by American industrialists to work in textile factories. The rhetorical separation of "work" from "home" and identification of the one with men and the other with women undermined societal respect and even the self-respect of women who worked outside of the home. It also, just as invidiously, hid the work that still went on at home, the extent to which the home was still, and would continue to be, for women a workplace, even when it served as a respite from work for men. What women accomplished in the home was not only the unpaid work of domestic service, but often work that was income-producing and essential to family economic survival or advancement If the modem conflict between mothers' wage-earning and childrearing seems to be new, that is not because mothers in the past did not contribute to family income but because they took industry into their households, or took laundry into their households, or took boarders or lodgers in, to create cash value. Beginning in the early nineteenth century, rural women not only sold their butter, cheese and eggs but also braided straw hats or baskets at home or sold surplus cloth to the local store. In cities, manufacturers of ready-made clothing found their most exploitable labor force among poor and often widowed women who "finished" piles of shirts or pants at home, with miles of stitches, so that they could watch their children and earn money-meager as it was-at the same time. By the end of the century this manufacturing system of "given-out" work operated on a mass scale, employing thousands of immigrant women in their tenement homes, making mass-produced jewelry, trimming hats, and other similar tasks, as well as sewing. Black women

INTRODUCTION

xiii

found one alternative to domestic service in white families' homes by taking other people's washing into their own homes. During the mass immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, many women increased their own domestic burdens but made cash by giving space to a lodger or feeding a boarder. Thus in many ways wives and mothers added to family income, stretching their strength perhaps to the breaking point, but without even appearing on the census takers' rolls as "in the labor force." Not until the 1920s and 1930s~by which time most Americans lived in urban places, and state regulation had foreclosed much "given-out" industry, and compulsory school laws kept children at school rather than earning wages for the family, and federal restriction of immigration greatly reduced the flow of transient lodgersdid wives and mothers in any large proportions enter the recorded labor force. At that point the problem of child care for working mothers, and the conflict between work and home, was perceived to be pressing, as these have ever since. The coverage in this volume, from Native American and slave women in the early nineteenth century, through pioneers and immigrants, to modern college graduates in the mid-twentieth century, gives a compelling overview of the persistent weightiness and consequence of wives' and mothers' economic roles.

The Intersection of Work and Family Life

WORK AND FAMILY LIFE

3

ECONOMIC ORGANIZATION AND THE POSITION OF WOMEN AMONG THE IROQUOIS 1 by Judith K. Brown Oakland University

ABSTRACT The relationship between the position of women and their economic role is examined by comparing ethnohistoiic and ethnographic data relating to the Iroquois of North America and the Bemba of Northern Rhodesia. It is concluded that the high status of Iroquois women reflected their control of their tribe's economic Organization.

INTRODUCTION My purpose is to investigate the relationship between the position of women and their economic role. Three possibilities are suggested in the literature. Lowie (1961: 201) felt that in determining women's status economic considerations could be "offset and even negatived" by historical factors. Malinowski (1913) maintained that the considerable economic contribution of Australian aborigine women was extorted from them through male "brutalization" and confirmed female subservience. The opposite point of view is expressed by Jenness (1932: 137): If women among the Iroquois enjoyed more privileges and possessed greater freedom than the women of other tribes, this was due . . . to the important place that agriculture held in their economic life, and the distribution of labour . . . {which left] the entire cultivation of the fields and the acquisition of the greater part of the food supply to the women. His explanation for the high status of women among the Iroquois is essentially economic, stressing the extent of their economic contribution, but failing to deal with their place in the economic organization. Other authors have suggested that matrilineality, matrilocality or a combination of the two explain the high status of women among the Iroquois. That matrilineality and matrilocality are hardly unrelated to economic considerations had been suggested by Stites (1905), and has been again more recently by Cough ., Glances and Glimpses or Fifty Years Social including Twenty Years Professional Life (Boston, 1856), 127-140. Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement m the United States (Cambridge, Mass., 1959), 115-119. 13. Sophie H. Drinker, "Women Attorneys of Colonial Times," Maryland Historical Society Bulletin, LVI, No. 4 (Dec., 1961). 14. Dexter, Colonial Women, 34-35, 162-165. 15. Harriet W. Marr, The Old New England Academies (New York, 1959), Chap. 8; Thomas Woody, A History of Women's Education in the United States, 2 vols. (New York, 1929) H, 100-109, 458-460, 492-493. 16. Matthew Carey, Essays on Political Economy . . . . (Philadelphia, 1822), 459.

WORK AND FAMILY LIFE

43

17. T h e Maternent! on women industrial workers are based on the following sources: Edith Abbot, Women in Industry (New York, 1910), 66-80; Edith Abbot, "Harriet Martineau and the Employment of Women in 1836," Journal of Political Economy, XIV (Dec., 1906), 614-626; Matthew Carey, Miscellaneous Essays (Philadelphia, 1830), 153-203; Helen L. Sumner, History of Women in Industry in the United States, in Report on Condition of Woman and Child Wage-Earners m the United States, 19 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1910), IX. Also: Elizabeth F. Baker, Technology and Woman's Work (New York, 1964), Chaps. 1-5. 18. Emily P u t n a m , The Lady: Studies of certain significant Phases of her History (New York, 1910), 319-320. Barbara Welter, " T h e Cult of T r u e Womanhood: 1820-1860," American Quarterly, XVIII, No. 2, Part 1 (Summer, 1966), 151-174. 19. Veblen generalized from his observations of the society of the Gilded Age and fell into the usual error of simply ignoring the lower class women, whom be dismissed as "drudges . . . fairly content with their lot," but his analysis of women's role in "conspicuous consumption" and of the function of women's fashions is unsurpassed. For references see: T h o m e i n Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York, 1962, first printing, 1899), 70-71, 231-232. T h o m e i n Veblen, T h e Economic Theory of Woman's Dress," Essays in Our Changing Order (New York, 1934), 65-77. 20. Like most groups fighting status oppression women formulated a compensatory ideology of ' " » » i » superiority. Norton Mezvinsky h a s postulated that this was dearly expressed only in 1874; in fact this formulation appeared in the earliest speeches of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and in the speeches a n d resolutions of the Seneca Falls Conventions and other pre-Civil W a r woman's rights conventions. R a t h e r t h a n a main motivating force, the idea was a tactical formulation, designed t o take advantage of the popularly held male belief in woman's " m o r a l " superiority a n d to convinci r e f o r m e n t h a t they needed the votes of women. Those middle das* fmimUi« who believed in woman's " m o r a l " superiority exploited the concept in order to win their m a j o r goal—female ^quality. For references see: Norton Mezvinsky, " A n I d e a of Female Superiority," Midcontinent American Studies Journal, II, No. 1 (Spring, 1961), 17-26. E. D. Stanton, S. B. Anthony a n d M. J . Gage, cds-, A History of Woman Suffrage, 6 vota. (New York, 1881-1922), I , 72, 479, 522, 529 a n d passim. Alan P . Grimes, The Puritan Ethic and Woman Sufrage (New York, 1967), Chap*. 2 a n d 3. 21. Stanton et al, History of Woman Sufrage, I, 70. 22. Mary R . Beard, Woman as Farce in History: A Study of Traditions and Realities (New York, 1946).

44

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

REFLECTIONS ON THE BLACK WOMAN'S ROLE IN THE COMMUNITY OF SLAVES BY A N G E L A D A V I S

WORK AND FAMILY LIFE jj>ir ι D**B to pseaeotly beine held, without fa the Mana Cooaty Jail in San Rafael, ßtfoaria fwim Ihiee «iiilal cfaiijcs ci milder, aittpping. and ccgpincy to commit both. The stem from an abortive escape by black ^ i i m from the Marin County Court House, Aug. 7, 1970. She has *»i«t any involvement in allrnuHwl escape. Prier to her arrest Sister Denis «a* tfarhmg in the Philosophy Department ¿ the University of California in Los Angeles, jbe was fired twice by the University's Regents: am because she is a member of the Communist

45

Pally and ihe aooood fior her speeches and other activities en behalf of the Soledad Bröthen and an political IMÌSUUUV Her book; If They Come te the Montine.· Veice» of Rabtmmee, edited by Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker, was pnbHihnd October ISTI by Third Pleas, New York. New York- Containing ararmbrrof fundamental essays by Angela Davis, it inebdes articles by Bettina Aptheker, Jamft Baldwin, Margaret Burnham, Eridca Hufacins, Rachel! Magee, Howard Moore, Huey P. Newton, Bobby Sesie and The Soledad Brothers.

INTRODUCTION

I

was immensely pleased to leam o(

T H E BLACX SCHOLAR'S

plans to devote

an entire issue to the black woman. The paucity of literature on the black woman is outrageous on its face. But we most also contend with the fact that too many of these rare studies must claim as their signal achievement the reinforcement of fictitious cliches. They have given credence to grossly distorted categories through which the black woman continues to be perceived. In the words of Nathan and Julia Hare, " . . . she has been labeled 'aggressive' or 'matriarchal' by white scholars and 'castrating female' by [some] blacks." (Transaction, Nov.-Dec., 1970) Many have recently sought to remedy this situation. But for die time being, at least, we are still confronted with diese reified images of ourselves. And for now, we must still assume the responsibility of shattering them. Initially, I did not envision this paper as strictly confined to the era of slavery. Yet, as I began to think through the issue of the black matriarch, I came to the conclusion that it had to be refuted at its presumed historical inception. The chief problem I encountered stemmed from die conditions of my incarceration: opportunities for researching the issue I wanted to explore were extremely limited. I chose, therefore, to entitle this piece "Reflections . . . " It does not pretend to be more than a collection of ideas which would consitute a starting point — a framework within which to conduct a rigorous reinvestigation of the black woman as she interacted with her people and with her oppressive environment during slavery. I would like to dedicate these reflections to one of the most admirable black leaders to emerge from the ranks of our liberation movement — to George Jackson, whom I loved and lespected in every way. As I came to know and love him, I saw him developing an acute sensitivity to die real problems being black women and thus refining his ability to distinguish these from their mythical transpositions. George was uniquely aware of the need to extricate Ι»ι»κ»1< and other black men from the remnants of divisive and destructive myths purporting to represent the black woman. If his life had not been so precipitously and savagely extinguished, he would have surely accomplished a task he had already outlined some time ago: a systematic critique of his past misconceptions about black women and of their roots in die ideology of the established order. He wanted to appeal to other black men, still similarly disoriented, to likewise correct themselves through self-criticism. George viewed this obligation as a revolutionary duty, but also, and equally important, as an expression of his boundless love for all black women.

46

HISTORY OF WOMEN IN THE UNITED STATES

matiuakœal blade woman has been repeatedly invoked as one of the fatal by-products of slavery. When the Moynihan Report consecrated this myth with Washington's stamp of approval, its spurious content and propagandists mission should have become apparent Yet even outside the established ideological apparatus, and also among black people, unfortunate references to the matriaichate can still be encountered. Occasionally, there is even acknowledgement of the "tangle'of pathology* it supposedly engendered. (This black matriaichate, according to Moynihan et. aL defines the roots of our oppression as a people. ) An accurate portrait of die African woman in bondage must debunk the myth of the matriaichate. Such a portrait must simultaneously attempt to illuminate the historical matrix of her oppression and must evoke her varied, often heroic, responses to the slaveholder's domination. Taz

Lingering beneath the notion of the black matriarch is an unspoken indictment of our female forebears as having actively assented to slavery. The notorious cliche, the "emasculating female," has its roots in the fallacious inference that in playing a central part in die slave "family," the black woman related to the slaveholding class as collaborator. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the most fundamental sense, the slave system did not — and could not — engender and recognize a matriarchal family structure. Inherent in the very concept of the matriarchy is "power." It would have been exceedingly risky for the slaveholding class to openly acknowledge symbols of authority — female symbols no less than male. Such legitimized concentrations of authority might eventually wnl«»«h their "power" against the slave system itself.

T h e Ambucan brand of slavery strove toward a rigidified disorganization in family life, just as it had to proscribe all potential sodai structures within which black people might forge a collective and con-

scious existence. 1 Mothers and fathers were brutally separated; children, when they became of age, were branded and frequently seveicd from their mothers. That the mother was "the only legitimate parent of her child" did not therefore mean that she was even permitted to guide it to maturity. Those who lived under a common r o o f were often unrelated through blood. Frederick Douglass, for instance, had no recollection of his father. He only vaguely recalled having seen his mother — and then c o extremely rare occasions Moreover, at die age of seven, he was forced to abandon the dwelling of his grandmother, of whom he would later say: 'She was to me a mother and a father." 1 * The strong personal bonds between immediate family members which oftentimes persisted despite coerced séparation bore witness to die remarkable capacity of black people for resisting the disorder so violently imposed on their lives.

Wheke families were

allowed to thrive, they were, for the most part, external fabrications serving the designs of an avaricious, profit-seeking slaveholder. The Strang lui») of die slave owuei dominated the Negro family, which existed at his mercy and often at his own penonal instigation. An ex-slave has told of getting married on tine plantation: *When yon warned, you had to i m p over a broom three tunes.*'

1. It is intesating to noto a pwilH in Nasi Germany: Willi all its ranting and raving about motherhood and the family. Hitler's legbut ina#T a cootaoot altwmpt to stiip die family of virtually all its social functions. Hw ihnnf of their undpokea ptoff >τπ for the £unfy wss to iffli**» it to a biological unit end to fosee its BBODsbss to sdete in An im^nodifttDd to the fascist biffane racy. Clearly the Nazis endeavored to uuili the £mily in oiilfí to ensue that it not become a i ciilf ι from which oppositional activity might originate. la. Herbert Ap&eker, ed- A Documentary History of the Negro Fecole fa the United State*, New Tode: The Citadel Press, 1906 (1st ecL, 1951), p. 272. 2. Andrew Bfflmnley, Blade FamOet la White itlMnCSi Enjpewood^ New Jen*»; FrenticeHall, Ino, 1968, p. 61.

WORK AND FAMILY LIFE This slave went on to describe the varigas ways in which his master forcibly gjupled men and women with the aim of poducmg the maximum number of heathy child-slaves. In the words of John Henrik Clarke, The family as a functional entity was outlawed and permitted to exist only when it benefited the slave-master. Maintenance of the slave family as a family unit benefited the slave owners only when, and to the extent that such unions created new slaves who could be exploited.)

The designation of the black woman as a matriarch is a cruel misnomer. It is a misnomer because it implies stable kinship structures within which die mother exercises decisive authority. It is cruel because it ignores the profound traumas the black woman must have experienced when she had to surrender her child-bearing to alien and predatory eronnmir interests. Even the broadest construction of the matriarch concept would not render it applicable to the black slave woman. But it should not be inferred that she therefore played no significant role in the community of slaves. Her indispensable efforts to ensure the survival of her people can hardly be contested. Even if she had done no more, her deeds would still be laudable. But her concern and struggles for physical survival, while clearly important, did not constitute her most outstanding contributions. It will be submitted that by virtue of the brutal force of circumstances, the black woman was assigned the mission of promoting the consciousness and practice of resistance. A great deal has been said about the blade men and resistance, but very little about the unique relationship black women bore to die resistance struggles during slavery. To understand the part she played in developing and sharpening die thrust towards freedom, the broader meaning of slavery and of American slavery in particular must be explored.

47

Suvm

Β AN ancient human institution. Of slave labor in its traditional form and of serfdom as well, Karl Marx had the following to say: The slave stands in absolutely no relation to the objective conditions of his labor; it if rather the labor itself, in the form of the slave as of the serf, which is placed in the category of morgonic condition of production ilnngwlf the othdr natural beings, e.g. —