Running from Bondage
Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America

A compelling examination of the ways enslaved women fought for their freedom during and after the Revolutionary War.

Karen Cook Bell (Author)

9781108831543, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 July 2021

254 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 2.5 cm, 0.56 kg

'Bell has offered an invaluable service in bringing to the center those who have held a 'peripheral position' in the historical record.' Ryan C. McIlhenny, Journal of the Early Republic

Running from Bondage tells the compelling stories of enslaved women, who comprised one-third of all runaways, and the ways in which they fled or attempted to flee bondage during and after the Revolutionary War. Karen Cook Bell's enlightening and original contribution to the study of slave resistance in eighteenth-century America explores the individual and collective lives of these women and girls of diverse circumstances, while also providing details about what led them to escape. She demonstrates that there were in fact two wars being waged during the Revolutionary Era: a political revolution for independence from Great Britain and a social revolution for emancipation and equality in which Black women played an active role. Running from Bondage broadens and complicates how we study and teach this momentous event, one that emphasizes the chances taken by these 'Black founding mothers' and the important contributions they made to the cause of liberty.

Introduction: Enslaved women's fugitivity
1. 'A negro wench named Lucia': Enslaved women during the eighteenth century
2. 'A mulatto woman named Margaret': Pre-Revolutionary fugitive women
3. 'A well-dressed woman named Jenny': Revolutionary Black women, 1776–1781
4. 'A negro woman called Bett': Overcoming obstacles to freedom in Post-Revolutionary America
5. Confronting the power structures: Marronage and Black women's fugitivity
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Slavery & abolition of slavery [HBTS], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], History of the Americas [HBJK]