University of Arkansas Press Publishes Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History

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Women and Slavery in America

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History, edited by Catherine M. Lewis and J. Richard Lewis ($22.50, paper; $59.95, library cloth edition) has been published by the University of Arkansas Press.

The edited collection offers readers an opportunity to examine the establishment, growth and evolution of slavery in the United States as it impacted women — enslaved and free, African American and white, wealthy and poor, northern and southern. The primary documents — including newspaper articles, broadsides, cartoons, pamphlets, speeches, photographs, memoirs, and editorials — are organized thematically and represent cultural, political, religious, economic and social perspectives on this dark and complex period in American history.

According to Leslie A. Schwalm, author of A Hard Fight For We: Women’s Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina and Emancipation’s Diaspora, the book is “an impressive selection of documents that brilliantly illustrates the many dimensions of women’s experience of slavery, from the earliest laws, to the conditions of their productive and reproductive labor, to the use of coercion and violence against them, to enslaved women’s resistance, flight, and their claim on freedom during the era of the Civil War. A welcome addition to the study of women and slavery, this documentary history will provide a superb complement to classroom instruction in history, women’s studies, and African American studies.”

Women and Slavery in America is the third edited collection from the father and daughter team of Catherine M. Lewis, professor of history at Kennesaw State University, and J. Richard Lewis, a desegregation consultant and former educator and academic administrator and president of JRL Educational Services. The Lewis’s Jim Crow America: A Documentary History (University of Arkansas Press, 2009) was named an Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association.