Abstract
Libra R. Hilde's Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century is a timely and valuable addition to the scholarship on fatherhood, masculinity, and the enslaved family in the US South. Building on recent work by scholars including Emily West (2004) and Daina Ramey Berry (2007), Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty is an ambitious and well-researched study that emphasizes the important role Black fathers played within the family unit during and after slavery.
Hilde explains that a primary objective of her book “is to counter the enduring stereotypes of black men's irresponsibility within the family,” highlighting the perceived instability of the Black family as arising from Daniel Patrick Moynihan's controversial 1965 study The Negro Family: The Case for National Action (3). This is achieved through a careful analysis of the source material, which includes autobiographies and archival oral histories of formerly enslaved people, with Hilde contending that she “made a conscious decision to focus on sources that allow for an examination of the emotional aspects of father/child relationships” (24).
Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty opens with Harriet Jacobs’ reminiscences of her father, Elijah Knox. Elijah Knox was a carpenter and made great efforts to care for his children, both emotionally and financially, including attempting to buy his children's freedom. Jacobs clearly admired her father for his efforts, recognizing that he had done everything in his power to provide for his children, as “in a system engineered to deny his patriarchal rights, Elijah attempted to assert his authority” (1). Hilde demonstrates through this first example that despite the many constraints of slavery, enslaved men loved their children and played a significant role in their lives.
Enslaved fathers cared and provided for their loved ones despite facing many challenges in slavery. Men were unable to shield their families against the inherent violence of enslavement. Enslaved fathers could not protect their families from separation or defend their loved ones against the ever-present threat of abuse and sexual violence without putting themselves in danger. Abroad marriages meant that some fathers lived apart from their wives and children and so were greatly limited in when they could see their loved ones, as their enslaver controlled when they could visit their family. In spite of these obstacles, Hilde notes that “enslaved men retained a strong sense of what it meant to be a father” (66).
Rather than focusing on “heroic resistance,” which “equated masculinity with dramatic action even to the point of death” (17), Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty instead emphasizes the more covert ways in which enslaved fathers resisted slavery, which Hilde terms “the subtle resistance of caretaking” (69). Since men could not overtly protect their families without risking their livelihoods, fathers attempted “to safeguard loved ones through less visible and more ideological means” (106). Hilde shows how enslaved fathers shared life lessons and passed down skills to their children to prepare them for the future. Fathers also offered religious guidance as a way to teach their children self-respect, with religion also functioning as a means of survival. This more covert form of resistance was a means in which enslaved fathers could provide for their children within the confines of slavery.
In the second chapter, “I Liked My Papa the Best: Enslaved Fathers,” Hilde examines children's reminiscences of their enslaved fathers. Hilde explains that “in their commentary on their fathers, children emphasized men's ability to survive, maintain their dignity, and support their kin in diverse ways” (67). Just as Harriet Jacobs highlighted her father's skilled status as a carpenter, Hilde notes that formerly enslaved people interviewed for the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) in the 1930s expressed pride in their status as skilled when speaking about their fathers. Formerly enslaved people demonstrated their satisfaction in their fathers’ achievements since being skilled gave men the means to support their family in slavery and freedom: “A good father used his strength, ingenuity, and skill to model self-respect and to care for his family” (82). Children admired fathers for possessing other qualities, including physical strength, intelligence, and for resisting punishment in slavery. However, Hilde notes that formerly enslaved people respected “men engaged with and affectionate toward their families” the most (72). Significantly, Hilde demonstrates that children retained positive memories of their fathers even if they had been separated from them at a very young age, noting that “through memory, a father's influence could extend across time and space” (77). Formerly enslaved children understood that an absent father was the result of the cruelties of the institution of slavery, rather than a lack of individual responsibility or selfishness on the part of their father. Interested readers should consult recent work by Susan-Mary Grant and David Bowe on the FWP interviews in which they also highlight positive memories of enslaved fatherhood shared by FWP informants (see Susan-Mary Grant and David Bowe, ““My Daddy … He was a Good Man”: Gendered Genealogies and Memories of Enslaved Fatherhood in America's Antebellum South,” Genealogy 4, no. 2 [2020]: 43).
Hilde contrasts these positive reminiscences of Black fathers to that of white fathers in Chapters 5 and 6, specifically enslaved children fathered as a result of white men's sexual violence. While some FWP informants approved of white enslavers who freed their children, white men who sold or abused their enslaved children were denounced. Hilde establishes that formerly enslaved people who had white fathers often showed little respect or interest in these men and “often felt fatherless” (149). She examines the rejection of white fatherhood by formerly enslaved people, contending that those “who felt betrayed by their fathers had little love for these men and rejected their white ancestry” (187). Offering Frederick Douglass as an example of a formerly enslaved person with little interest in his white father, Hilde illustrates how Douglass “lamented not knowing his mother and her forefathers, but he did not feel a similar sense of loss when it came to his white father” (189).
The final two chapters of Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty are dedicated to fatherhood in freedom. After emancipation, some formerly enslaved people chose last names that linked them to their fathers, while for others their choice of name served to cut ties from a former enslaver or a white father. Hilde emphasizes name choice as a further act of resistance, as through their choice of surname formerly enslaved people “wrote their own history that pointed to a true lineage, heritage, and family” (252). Naming traditions functioned as memory and children remembered and memorialized fathers who had cared for them through their choice of name in freedom. Hilde also demonstrates the great significance fathers placed on education in freedom, highlighting the lengths many men went to in order to educate their children. Ultimately, Hilde demonstrates that Black fathers continued to provide for their families despite the ongoing dehumanizing and persecutory context of the post-emancipation era.
Given the book's intended focus on the “Long Nineteenth Century,” Hilde could have devoted more attention to fatherhood in the postbellum period rather than in just her final two chapters. Nevertheless, Slavery, Fatherhood, and Paternal Duty in African American Communities over the Long Nineteenth Century is a well-researched and vital contribution to the field which convincingly demonstrates the “quietly heroic efforts of African American men as fathers” (281).