Invisibility and Intersectionality: Seeking Free Black Women in Antebellum Kentucky

Summary

Investigation into the lifeways of freedman George White suggest a successful businessman with the means to purchase and keep approximately 300 acres, to purchase and emancipate his family, and to build a safe community for his family and other freed slaves in eastern Kentucky.  However, documentary research revealed only small fragments about the female members of his family. The women are, for the most part, invisible.  This paper uses intersectionality as a theoretical lens to explore the invisibility of free black women in the Antebellum Kentucky.   Taking into consideration the multiple layers of social relationships and social constructions of the Antebellum period as well as our own contemporary struggles with race, class, and gender, how can we better query the material traces of freed women?  More importantly, perhaps, can intersectionality allow for a more nuanced exploration into the processes of invisibility and erasure of women?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2018   •
• Intersections of Gender, Sexuality, Class, Race, Ethnicity, Age, Religion, the Military, etc.

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): 741