They Were Her Property

White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

By: Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

Narrated by: Allyson Johnson

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

Women ARE just like men

This book only goes to prove my point that women can be cold heartless egotistical and are more than capable of doing the very same things they real about men

Some of the things these women did would give me a sickening feeling as it would remind me of how my mother was a farmer and raised cattle for sale and profit.

Today as we talk of reparations Americans gave the rebel traders reparations but not the slaves. For those who would give the argument that this was too many years ago, as developers build communities the federal government required them to segregate how’s it and real estate agent denied African Americans opportunities to purchase homes. This did Nied them the economic opportunity of inherited wealth. This is still being done today.

Most people cannot talk about these things as we cannot bring ourselves to admit them. Shame on us .

Great documentation Poor Editing

The content of this book is important. The stories shared are from a variety of sources, mostly from the previously ignored contemporary voices of enslaved people themselves. The thesis with the evidence is strongly supported. The reason I gave it only 4 stars is that the editing is poor. Chapters claim to have a topic, like slave markets or slave discipline, but the chapter and it's stories would meander across all aspects of slave holding by mistresses. I'm glad I read it but with a little more editorial shaping it could have been a very powerful entry into public discourse.

The Reality Behind The Myth

This deeply researched book tells a story of how white women were economically and socially empowered through carefully crafted documents that gave them sole ownership of property that could not be touched by a husband or his creditors and how the women fought it the courts to retain their sole ownership.
HOWEVER this property was HUMAN and the empowerment came from exercising supremacy over these humans and deeming them to have lesser feelings of pain, sorrow, and love.
This book opened my eyes and filled in some of the questions I had about how white women lived and operated in the brutal world of slavery. They were part and parcel of all aspects of brutal race based slavery.
It made me understand how the women’s fierce defense of their property rights was part of their radical support of the confederacy and their later participation robbing black citizens of their ability to thrive and participate as white citizens and in sometimes being the instruments for rationalizing mob murders of black people.
White women were responsible for writing many of the letters and commentary that insisted that slavery was a good thing for black people and a burden for whites people. This was the fairy tale that was promulgated and believed while all along the truth of buying and selling, brutal punishments and murder lurked in court documents, records of sales, and interviews with former slaves.
I recommend the book to everyone.

A financial debt still owed

It was a great read of the true American history the good, bad and ugly depending on whose mouth you hear about the slavey experience.
A huge debt is owed and yet to be paid to all descendants of African American slavery on American soil by this government. For true emancipation of the nation. A true debt is forever due.
This is a required read by all civilized human beings.

Riveting and written

Great interpretation and inclusion of overlooked historical text that tell a much deeper, honest account of white women’s full involvement in slavery.