Word: slaving
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...American act, a supreme gesture of self-creation in the land where Norma Jean Baker became Marilyn Monroe, homosexuals became gays, and Esso became Exxon. But for many blacks, the choice of a word by which others will know them has a special significance. During their centuries of bondage, slaves had names that were often chosen by their masters. Booker T. Washington wrote in his autobiography Up from Slavery that there was one point on which former slaves were generally agreed: "that they must change their names." This process of shucking off so-called slave names, commonly in favor...
...added that slave women placed greatimportance on the well-being of their children.When a woman escaped from bondage, it was not forher own benefit but for the benefit of her child,Jones said...
Books such as Toni Morrison's novel Beloved can be valuable resources in studying the emotional ordeals of slave women, a Wellesley history professor told about 100 people at the opening speech last night for Women's History Week...
...speech entitled "History and Rememory: An Historian Looks At Toni Morrison's Beloved," Professor Jacqueline Jones said it is normally difficult for historians to speculate about the lives of slave women because primary sources written by whites or escaped slaves are unemotional and factual...
Beloved--the 1988 Pulitzer Prize winning novel about a Black slave woman and her child--shows the emotional side of slave women, a subject Jones said many historians are reluctant to investigate. But she added that studying this aspect of slave culture makes it easier to understand the institution of slavery as a whole...