The quarters and the fields : slave families in the non-cotton South

Resource Information

The work The quarters and the fields : slave families in the non-cotton South represents a distinct intellectual or artistic creation found in University of Missouri Libraries. This resource is a combination of several types including: Work, Language Material, Books.

Label

The quarters and the fields : slave families in the non-cotton South

Title remainder

slave families in the non-cotton South

Statement of responsibility

Damian Alan Pargas

Creator

• Pargas, Damian Alan

Subject

• Agriculture -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History
• Families
• Geography -- Social aspects -- Southern States -- History
• History
• Plantation life -- Southern States -- History
• Slaven (arbeid)
• Slavernij
• Slavery -- Southern States -- History
• Slaves -- Family relationships -- Southern States
• Slaves -- Southern States -- Social conditions
• Southern States -- Social conditions
• African American families -- Southern States -- Social conditions

Genre

• History

Language

eng

Summary

• In The Quarters and the Fields, Damian Pargas provides a unique approach to the examination of slavery. Rather than focusing on slave work and family life on cotton plantations, he compares the practice of slavery among the other major agricultural cultures in the nineteenth-century South: tobacco, mixed grain, rice, and sugar cane
• In doing so, Pargas reveals how the demands of different types of masters and crops influenced work patterns and habits, which in turn shaped slaves' family life. Demanding labor arrangements in Virginia forced slave mothers to find childcare from white mistresses or elderly slaves. South Carolina slave owners' focus on task completion rather than gang labor led to enslaved field hands having more time to spend with their families and engage in work on their own behalf. In Louisiana, the long brutal days of cane cultivation left slaves little time for family contact but provided them with unique opportunities to improve their families' material conditions
• By presenting a broader view of the complex forces that shaped enslaved people's family lives, not only from outside but also from within, this book takes an inclusive approach to the slave agency debate. These families negotiated a variety of boundaries and opportunities, and, as Pargas reveals, the differences had much more to do with local needs and customs than with the institution of slavery itself. The Quarters and the Fields offers a means for understanding slave families as they truly were: dynamic social units that were formed and existed under different circumstances across time and space. --Book Jacket

Member of

• New perspectives on the history of the South

Cataloging source

DLC

Dewey number

975/.041

Index

index present

LC call number

E443

LC item number

.P37 2010

Literary form

non fiction

Nature of contents

bibliography

Series statement

New perspectives on the history of the South