Excerpt from The Narrative of Bethany Veney, a Slave Woman Already, this fact in our national history is largely overlooked and to the generation now coming upon the stage of action is almost unknown. Compared with the lives of many of her class, Betty's was uneventful. Yet in it was much of tragic adventure and tender pathos. Her endurance under hardship, her fidelity to trust, and, withal, her religious faith, commend her as a fit subject, not only to impress the lesson of Slavery in the past, but to inspire and deepen a sense of responsibility toward the wronged and perse outed race which She represents. Beyond these considerations is this: her days have already far outrun the allotted threescore years and ten, and her natural strength is much abated. If sold, these pages may help to render her declining years easier and freer from care. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

In More than Chains and Toil, Joan Martin explores the experiences of enslaved women and the realities of their social world to uncover the interrelationships among moral agency, work, and human meaning. She then reflects ethically on the implications such a distinct perspective on labor might have for women in contemporary African American communities and for broader discussions about the meaning of work in American society.

Offering a revolutionary way of reading 19th-century slave narratives, Fishburn seeks to recover the philosophical foundations of African American literature. Underlying slave narrative is an expression of the problem of physical embodiment; that is, the dualistic thinking of the mind-body division. Fishburn's work uncovers the tension between needing to acknowledge the fact of human embodiment and wishing to overcome its consequences in a racist society. One of the strongest points made by this pioneering work is the controversial claim that these slave narratives offer one of the most telling, if largely overlooked, pre-Heideggerian critiques of liberal humanism ever attempted in the West.

Bethany Veney was born into slavery in Shenandoah County, Virginia, in 1813. In her narrative, written in the late 1880's, she tells her life's story, including early childhood, family separation, physical punishment at the hands of masters, religious awakening, marriages, motherhood and, finally, freedom.

A Will to Choose traces the history of African-American Methodism beginning with their emergence in the fledgling American Methodist movement in the 1760s. Responding to Methodism's anti-slavery stance, African-Americans joined the new movement in large numbers and by the end of the eighteenth century, had made up the largest minority in the Methodist church, filling positions of authority as class leaders, exhorters, and preachers. Through the first half of the nineteenth century, African Americans used the resources of the church in their struggle for liberation from slavery and racism in the secular culture. --From publisher description.

Recent scholarship on slavery has explored the lives of enslaved people beyond the watchful eye of their masters. Building on this work and the study of space, social relations, gender, and power in the Old South, Stephanie Camp examines the everyday containment and movement of enslaved men and, especially, enslaved women. In her investigation of the movement of bodies, objects, and information, Camp extends our recognition of slave resistance into new arenas and reveals an important and hidden culture of opposition. Camp discusses the multiple dimensions to acts of resistance that might otherwise appear to be little more than fits of temper. She brings new depth to our understanding of the lives of enslaved women, whose bodies and homes were inevitably political arenas. Through Camp's insight, truancy becomes an act of pursuing personal privacy. Illegal parties ("frolics") become an expression of bodily freedom. And bondwomen who acquired printed abolitionist materials and posted them on the walls of their slave cabins (even if they could not read them) become the subtle agitators who inspire more overt acts. The culture of opposition created by enslaved women's acts of everyday resistance helped foment and sustain the more visible resistance of men in their individual acts of running away and in the collective action of slave revolts. Ultimately, Camp argues, the Civil War years saw revolutionary change that had been in the making for decades.

Karen Hansen's richly anecdotal narrative explores the textured community lives of New England's working women and men—both white and black—n the half century before the Civil War. Her use of diaries, letters, and autobiographies brings their voices to life, making this study an extraordinary combination of historical research and sociological interpretation. Hansen challenges conventional notions that women were largely relegated to a private realm and men to a public one. A third dimension—the social sphere—also existed and was a critical meeting ground for both genders. In the social worlds of love, livelihood, gossip, friendship, and mutual assistance, working people crossed ideological gender boundaries. The book's rare collection of original writings reinforces Hansen's arguments and also provides an intimate glimpse into antebellum New England life. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994. Karen Hansen's richly anecdotal narrative explores the textured community lives of New England's working women and men—both white and black—n the half century before the Civil War. Her use of diaries, letters, and autobiographies brings their voices to li

Publication is an act of power. It brings a piece of writing to the public and identifies its author as a person with an intellect and a voice that matters. Because nineteenth-century Black Americans knew that publication could empower them, and because they faced numerous challenges getting their writing into print or the literary market, many published their own books and pamphlets in order to garner social, political, or economic rewards. In doing so, these authors nurtured a tradition of creativity and critique that has remained largely hidden from view. Bryan Sinche surveys the hidden history of African American self-publication and offers new ways to understand the significance of publication as a creative, reformist, and remunerative project. Full of surprising turns, Sinche's study is not simply a look at genre or a movement; it is a fundamental reassessment of how print culture allowed Black ideas and stories to be disseminated to a wider reading public and enabled authors to retain financial and editorial control over their own narratives.