Freedom’s Women examines the African American women’s experiences during the Civil War and the first five years of Reconstruction in Mississippi. Exploring issues of family and work, the author shows how African American women’s attempts to achieve more control over their lives shaped their attitudes toward work, marriage, family, and community.
African American women both accepted and defied conventional definitions of private and public spheres. As freed women and men tried to minimise interference by their former owners, practically everything considered private became a public issue: marriage, mobility, parenthood, housing, and control over African American women’s sexuality. Experiences such as pregnancy, nursing, the preparation of meals, and washing clothes, certainly viewed as private by freed women, became areas of heated debate between employers and employees.