They Were Her Property

This groundbreaking book delves into the role of white women in the American slave economy. Author Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers shows that slave-owning women were savvy economic actors who directly benefited from the South's slave market. White women employed the same brutal management techniques as men and often refused to relinquish ownership of their slaves. By examining the lives of enslaved people and slave-owning women, Jones-Rogers presents a narrative that challenges conventional wisdom about the economics and social conventions of slaveholding America.