They Were Her Property

White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

By: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins

Publisher's summary

A bold and searing investigation into the role of white women in the American slave economy.

Bridging women's history, the history of the South, and African-American history, this audiobook makes a bold argument about the role of white women in American slavery. Historian Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers draws on a variety of sources to show that slave-owning women were sophisticated economic actors who directly engaged in and benefited from the South's slave market. Because women typically inherited more slaves than land, enslaved people were often their primary source of wealth.

Not only did white women often refuse to cede ownership of their slaves to their husbands, they employed management techniques that were as effective and brutal as those used by slave-owning men.

White women actively participated in the slave market, profited from it, and used it for economic and social empowerment. By examining the economically entangled lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that forces us to rethink the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.

©2019 Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers (P)2019 Tantor

Read/listen to this book

If you are advising someone running for President or you are the candidate, read this book. If you are a person whom push’s identity politics, read this book. If you are a white American, read this book... if you are a person whom likes to think themselves informed you should read this book. This book is as enlightening a read as anyone could expect for said subject... Further it should be on everyone’s short list for summer/down time reads.

Powerful and Necessary

This is an amazing book to be read by all races to understand the role of white women in the slave industry in America. High suggest reading as part of a book group.

Nothing Like It!!

The information was astounding and almost shocking! This book uncovers many documented
truths and testimonies regarding the involvement of white women in the slave trade around the globe, particularly in the U.S. Many were actually “co- conspirators” in the slave trade not just as the wives and family of slave holders , but as slaveholders themselves. And these historical facts, explain the basis for white women’s participation in lynchings and their allegiance to White supremacy groups like the KKK after slavery.

Sheds light on an often overlooked history

This is a well researched, well written and accessible history, which documents the overlooked way in which white, slave owning women engaged in Southern Slavery.

Excellent book. Eye opening and disturbing

Details of the court cases women filed against their husbands added to the book's point.

The Single Narratives

.... this book might have troubled me the most of the recent books I’ve read bc of the shear degree of the systemic not only white washing but misogyny.... I can’t even say based on the book the omissions in our popular culture to devoid white woman from the role of slave owner when in fact they were significant contributors is disturbing. Our taught history has been such a life... but as you reveal more and more levels - you learn!

The book is well written and equally troubling.

Very Insightful Read

I love this book because it shows in my opinion a side of history that WW tried to bury and distance themselves from, and the last sentence was *chef's kiss*

Must read

Amazing book. Enlightening and educational. Must read to get an accurate understanding of history. Thank you to this author.

Horrifying and Important

In case anyone still believes that Southern Belles were anything but Southern Hells, even a few pages of this saga of cruelty and misery will disabuse those still blind and deaf to the truth. Even though the book was engrossing, thanks to the reader I kept falling asleep. The reader’s use of stereotype pronunciation only for Black voices struck me as condescending. I recommend reading a physical book instead of listening.

very interesting

interesting history lesson but the way the narrator changes her accent when she's quoting people is unnecessary and takes away from the performance