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A review by corsetedfeminist
They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South by Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers

challenging dark sad slow-paced

5.0

This book isn’t fun, but it is painfully necessary. 
Every page of it further takes apart the story that white women during slavery were quietly on the sidelines, letting the men deal with the buying and selling of people. Instead, it offers continued evidence that women were not only bystanders, but open participants in every part of slavery- the buying, the selling, the abuse, the treating of people as simply economic investments. Whether it’s young women being given enslaved persons as gift by their parents to ensure their economic independence from their husbands or women running auctions in their backyard, they were fully aware of what was happening. The chapter of how enslaved women were used as wet nurses broke me, especially in the discussion of how white women would make sure that their chosen slaves woman was pregnant at the proper time to be a wet nurse. 
I personally think that all white women, but especially southern white women, should read this book to face up to how white women have upheld racism from the beginning, using Black people (and other marginalized groups) as tools to try to escape the sexism they face instead of banding together to destroy the social structure all together. 

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