Table of Contents

Acknowledgments for the 1985 Edition ix

Preface to the New Edition xiii

Introduction 1

1 "My Mother Was Much of a Woman": Slavery, 1830-1860 9

2 Enslaved Women Becoming Freedwomen: The Civil War and Reconstruction 43

3 "Bent Backs and Laboring Muscles": in the Rural South, 1880-1915 77

4 Between the Southern Cotton Field and the Northern Ghetto: the Urban South, 1880-1915 103

5 "To Get Out of this Land of Sufring": Black Women Migrants to the North, 1900-1930 131

6 Harder Times: The Great Depression 163

7 The Roots of Two Revolutions, 1940-1955 195

8 The Struggle Confirmed and Transformed, 1955-1980 229

9 Crosscurrents of Past and Present, 1980-2009 267

Appendices 299

Notes 313

Bibliography 371

Index 421