In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

196 14 . Y . Black Teachers w hat i shall now relate is, what was told me by my mother and grandmother .” So Moses Roper began his account of a life in slavery, the early years of which he could recall only because his mother insisted that her son understand what a life—his life—as a slave entailed.1 in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, enslaved and free black mothers in the South worked tirelessly to educate their children despite overwhelming hardship, lack of opportunities, and legal restrictions. They taught their children about their ancestors, how to read and write, ways to earn a living, how to avoid the whip, and what slavery meant.2 Through these lessons, mothers shaped their children’s relationship to enslavement. education, in whatever form it took, helped children to better understand their position in families and on plantations. Such knowledge offered immense power, for it enabled women and their children to cope with day-to-day oppression while simultaneously envisioning a future in which slavery had no part. for mothers who fought to teach their children basic skills, the process of education, halting and incomplete as it often was, allowed them to have some control over the way their sons and daughters dealt with their surrounding worlds. ƒ Z % in an 1839 narrative, Peter wheeler recalled his earliest years when his mother told him tales about his ancestors and how his african-born great-grandfather came to america in chains. “Mother used to set and trot me on her knee,” he wrote, “and tell me these ’ere stories as soon as i could understand ’em.”3 Peter’s mother was one among many who insisted on teaching children their family history, despite, or perhaps because of, its often shattered nature.4 Knowledge of one’s past, especially a past that stretched beyond slavery, enabled both mothers 197 black teachers and children to control their identities and to assert a history that positioned them as grandchildren, aunts, and cousins rather than as slaves. John Brown could recite his parents’ names, where they had come from, and that his grandfather had been “of the eboe tribe.”5 James Curry learned about his origins from his kin and neighbors in North Carolina, who told him that “our forefathers and mothers were stolen from africa, where they were free men and women.”6 in virginia, Thomas Johnson’s mother told him that her father “came from africa , and was of the Guinea tribe,” adding that in africa, “they were once all free there.”7 an interest in genealogy was not new to the experience of africans in america. one man who spent his childhood in africa remembered asking his mother where their people came from; “she answered me, from one another; and so carried me to many generations back.”8 Like white and indian mothers, enslaved mothers relied upon oral traditions to pass along stories about ancestors , but most black women had a necessarily limited memory, ruptured by trauma and over four thousand miles of ocean separating them from generations of loved ones. family history was important as a form of sustainable memory, but it also reminded young children about the obstacles they faced. Many mothers chose to tell their sons and daughters about violent mistresses, abusive masters, and the perils of being born a slave with light-colored skin. The mother of Moses Roper told her young son of a jealous mistress who “went into my mother’s room with full intention to murder me with her knife and club.” Moses straightforwardly refers to the white mistress’s husband as “my father.”9 other enslaved men and women also learned about white fathers from their black mothers, who chose to speak honestly about a confusing and disturbing relationship rather than shroud the father’s identity in myth. “Mother’s master, Mr. Randolph, was my father,” Louisa Picquet wrote. “So mother told me.”10 when harriet Jacobs told her daughter about her white father, the girl responded that she had already guessed, and that “i am nothing to my father, and he is nothing to me. all my love is for you.”11 Not all mothers were so straightforward; frederick douglass heard about his parentage only through plantation rumors, but the limited time his mother, harriet Bailey, was able to spend with him may have affected her decision to withhold that information.12 Living on another plantation and only able to sneak over at night, harriet chose to...

Share