Enslaved women had little autonomy over their family lives according to slave owners and cultural practices of the time. However, some slave women found ways to exercise control through their household choices and leadership within double-headed households. While slave owners sometimes treated women as genderless to be more profitable, women resisted where possible through their interactions with family and children.

1. The Lives of Enslaved Women

2. The question: How much autonomy did slave women have?

3. Primary Documents Cornelia, Rose William, Fannie Moore, slave letters

4. Christie Farnhan Essay Don’t use the conjugal family modelto analyze slave families

5. Christie Farnhan Essay An African consanguinealmodel influenced black families on American plantations

6. Christie Farnhan Essay Many slave women were self-reliant and chose to lead their own households or to lead the family in double-headed households

7. Thelma Jennings essay Sometimes it was profitable to treat women as genderless.

8. Thelma Jennings essay Sometimes it wasn’t.

9. Thelma Jennings essay The ways a woman slave could interact with her family and children were controlled by the patriarch, but women fought back where they could.

10. Summary The first essay is academic synthesis; the second is primary level synthesis.“Two waves” of interpretation – 1950’s lack of control, 1970’s familial, cultural, and religious life

11. Our conclusion Enslaved women may have exercised some control of their lives through marriage and family choices, but slave owners and cultural practices left little room for women to exercise autonomy over family life.

12. Other sources/context