Black Women, Eldership, and Communities of Care in the Nineteenth-Century North

This essay compares the spiritual and material terms of aging among black women in the post-emancipation North. It contrasts the public representations of African American women elders and the more prosaic, material work that black women and broader northern free black communities performed in coping with the challenges of aging. Early American biographies of black women elders characterized them as pious exemplars of Christian virtue. They also showed how they used collective practices to cope with aging. Other sources reveal this communal ethos. The records of churches, mutual aid societies, black women authors, and others show how free black communities brought together religious and material resources to support African American women in the aging process. Through this "community of care," black Northerners provided material and spiritual support to an aging population of women.