Portland Public Library

Stolen childhood, slave youth in nineteenth-century America, Wilma King

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-246) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

Stolen childhood

bibliography

31867417

Wilma King

Blacks in the diaspora

slave youth in nineteenth-century America

Wilma King sheds light on a long-overlooked aspect of slavery in the United States--the wretched lives of the millions of young people enslaved in the nineteenth-century South. A substantial body of scholarship examines the history of U.S. slavery, but it has not focused on these children and their place in enslaved families and the slave community. Wilma King argues that childhood was stolen from these youngsters--they were forced into the workplace at an early age, subjected to arbitrary plantation authority and punishment, and were separated from family. For this exhaustive study, King draws on a wide range of sources, including government records and many unpublished archival materials. This volume tells the story of these children and youth, adding their experience to the history of slavery in the United States

"You know I am one man that do love my children" : slave children and youth in the family and community -- "Us ain't never idle" : the world of work -- "When day is done" : play and leisure -- "Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave" : temporal and spiritual education -- "What has ever come of my presus little girl" : the traumas and tragedies of slave children and youth -- "Free at last" : the quest for freedom -- "There's a better day a-coming" : the transition from slavery to freedom

Slave youth in nineteenth-century America