Southern Women Historiography Summary

In First Generations Women in Colonial America, Carol Berkin demonstrates the social, political, and economic circumstances that shaped and influenced the lives of women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the colonies. In exploring these women’s lives and circumstances it becomes clear that geography, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, and other factors less fixed such as war each influenced a woman’s experience differently and to varying degrees. In doing this, Berkin first showcases the life of a specific woman and then transposes that life onto the general historical framework and provides a context in which this woman would have lived. The lives of these women exemplified is also explored and demonstrated through the use of comparison to highlight their different experiences. Moreover, this analysis also seeks to identify the varied sources of these women’s power, albeit for many this power was limited. The analysis is broken up primarily by geography, then by race, and lastly by time and war. While these factors provide the overarching context of analysis, more specific factors are also introduced.

During the time of 1600-1700’s women did not have the same rights as men in other words they did not have any rights at all. Women were treated very poorly with no type of respect. In the book called FIRST Generations WOMEN in COLONIAL AMERICA, by Carol Berkin it talked about various examples of how women were treated. Throughout my essay I will be explaining a few topics that were repeatedly in the book and I found important. Huge topic like gender roles, women population, and men being privilege. It was not easy for women around this time era, because they had to deal with a lot of hurtful things. Women were doing things we would not to today just so they can survive. Even though some women by becoming a mother meant to die soon.

In Search of the Promised Land: A Slave Family In The Old South by John Hope Franklin and Loren Schweninger outlines a very unique African American family living in Nashville, TN accounting tales of the trials and tribulations that Sally Thomas, the mother, and her sons had to go through; and how in the end she accomplished her goal. The authors excellently executed the life of this family in an informational and intriguing text by explaining and comparing the different lives and classes of slaves back in that century through Sally and her son’s stories.The detail and the historical pictures in the text help give life and a sense of “realness” and credibility to the situations given to help breathe life into the story, making the story easier to understand and believe.

Imagine a historian, author of an award-winning dissertation and several books. He is an experienced lecturer and respected scholar; he is at the forefront of his field. His research methodology sets the bar for other academicians. He is so highly esteemed, in fact, that an article he has prepared is to be presented to and discussed by the United States’ oldest and largest society of professional historians. These are precisely the circumstances in which Ulrich B. Phillips wrote his 1928 essay, “The Central Theme of Southern History.” In this treatise he set forth a thesis which on its face is not revolutionary: that the cause behind which the South stood unified was not slavery, as such, but white supremacy. Over the course of

In the 1930’s there was a lot of racial tensions and expectations for southern culture. Things are different now than they were back then like the culture, but especially gender roles in the south.

The plot, or basic storyline, of this short story is about a black woman, Annie Johnson, based in the United States before 1905. Her marriage had collapsed due to her husband leaving her to pursue religion in Oklahoma and leaving her with very little money. The plotline develops on to show her struggle to support herself and her two sons and how she has to use courage to support herself and her family.

Glenda Gilmore, in her essay “Forging Interracial Links in the Jim Crow South,” attempts to tackle the charged concepts of feminism and race relations during the infamous Jim Crow era. Her analysis focuses on both the life and character of a black woman named Charlotte Hawkins Brown, a highly influential member of the community of Greensboro, North Carolina. Brown defied the odds given her gender and race and rose to a prominent place in society through carefully calculated interracial relations. Gilmore argues that in rising above what was expected of her as a black woman, Brown was forced to diminish her own struggles as a black woman, and act to placate

In her short story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker summarizes the representation of the beauty, the conflicts and struggles within African-American culture. “Everyday Use” focuses mainly between members of the Johnson family, consisting of a mother and her two daughters. One of the daughters Maggie, who was injured in a house fire and has living a shy life clinging to her mother for security. Her older sister is Dee, who grew up with a grace and natural beauty. “Dee is lighter than Maggie, with nicer hair and a fuller figure… (716) She also grew up determined to have a better life than her mother and sister. This takes place when Dee (the only family member to receive a formal education) returns to visit Dee’s mother and younger sister Maggie. Again this portrays a slight issue between two different views of the African-American culture. Alice uses symbolism to empathize the difference between these interpretations, showing that culture and heritage are parts of daily life. The title of the story, Everyday Use, symbolizes the living heritage of the Johnson family, a heritage that is still in “everyday use”.

From emancipation leading all the way to the 20th century, African American women struggled to find better opportunities outside of their agricultural laborer and domestic servant roles. In Cooking in Other Women’s Kitchens: Domestic Workers in the South, 1865-1960, author Rebecca Sharpless illustrates how African American women in the American South used domestic work, such as cooking, as a stepping stone from their old lives to the start of their new ones. Throughout the text, Sharpless is set out to focus on the way African American women used cooking to bridge slavery and them finding their own employment, explore how these women could function in a world of low wages, demanding work, and omnipresent racial strife, and refute stereotypes about these cooks. With the use of cookbooks, interviews, autobiographies, and letters from the women, Sharpless guides readers to examine the personal lives and cooking profession of these African American women and their ambition to support themselves and their families.

Anyone searching for understanding of the rich planter class of the Old South would be fascinated with James Henry Hammond and the Old South. Hammond’s attention to detail regarding his plantations and personal life gives clarity into the Old South period of American history. Gilpin Faust seamlessly guides the reader through Hammond’s life and career, leaving the reader to hate Hammond on one page, and cheer him on the next. As president of Harvard University, Gilpin Faust’s other books include Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War and The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil War South.

Civil War essay In your opinion, what caused the bitterness in the South? Could anything have been done to prevent it? What elements of southern life before the Civil War contributed to the idea of a fairy tale?

Franklin opened the interpretation of the South to alternate voices, and gave a firm framework on establishing the different perspectives relevant for Woodward’s experiential “not one South” thesis. The points of contention between their interpretations are telling about Southern histories, and their reputations evidenced the lingering effects of institutionalized racism, as Woodward often gets credit for opening Southern history to African American narratives. However, it was Franklin that did it first and allowed for agency, while Woodward’s narratives most featured black victimization/victimhood. Despite some differences in interpretation, Franklin and Woodward would become two of the most influential historians of the twentieth century. Only recently does it seems more women, more minorities, more identities are writing southern history from their unique viewpoints and interpretations. All of them aided by the path laid by Franklin. His influence is clear in the works of Tera Hunter, Mary Hoffschwelle, Karen Cox, Pippa Holloway, and all of the most recent histories of the South.Franklin’s essays mirrored role of African American in Southern historiography. Starting out, African Americans were given little or no attention at all, then came outright racist histories, then blacks as subjects of white actions/ideologies, and finally, blacks as full historical actors, controlling their own lives, demonstrating their own agency, controlling their own narratives.

John Shelton Reed asked, “"The South: Where is it? What is it?" (Reed 1994, 5). This paper will define the American South by the crops grown within the plantation system from the American Colonial period through the end of the antebellum period. The South has been an economically distinctive region reflected by the historic dominance of the plantation system.

Religion plays a different role in southern culture than it does in other parts of the nation. In “the bible belt”, religion is very integrated into both the local and regional cultures, demonstrated by higher attendance in religious activities and more religion affiliated establishments per square mile. The purpose of this paper is to understand how religion plays a role in the life of women in the south and discuss the ever-changing pressures they feel from their community and family. It will also explore why religious ties in the south are stronger than those of the rest of the nation. The research method for this paper is an extended life history of Janet Buckwell, who has lived her entire life

The South has a history of deep-rooted traditions, some more sinister than others. The deteriorating antebellum era makes the perfect backdrop for gothic literature, which highlights grotesque characters and themes of death, terror, and social isolation. Carson McCullers, born in Georgia, felt personally connected to these themes. She was a young genius, and felt alone in her advanced ideas and mature understanding of social issues. In a world full of labels and boxes, McCullers fit in no category perfectly, and felt the pain of that isolation acutely. The one thing all people are united by is their inability to feel united, and McCullers’s novels strives to depict this dilemma of human existence. McCullers turned to writing to express her suffering and offer solace to people like her in a world that felt lonely and unfair. Carson McCullers uses her novels much like how some use a diary, and through her characters she expresses her deepest fears and mental anguish. Throughout each one of her novels is a prevailing theme of isolation from society, which manifests itself in different ways, but can always be tied back to the inescapable loneliness of the author.