They Were Her Property

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South
The cover depicts an illustration of a slave auction in a large room with an ornate ceiling, where enslaved people stand on an auction block and the auctioneer is centered behind a dais. An audience of white people surround them, several of whom wear dresses.
AuthorStephanie Jones-Rogers
LanguageEnglish
SubjectHistory, women's studies, business & economics, 19th century, American-American studies
PublisherYale University Press
Publication date
February 19, 2019
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint & Digital
Pages296 (hardcover first edition)
AwardsLos Angeles Times Book Prize, Merle Curti Social History Award
ISBN9780300218664
Websitehttps://www.stephaniejonesrogers.com/book

They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South is a nonfiction history book by Stephanie Jones-Rogers. They Were Her Property is "the first extensive study of the role of Southern white women in the plantation economy and slave-market system"[1] and disputes conventional wisdom that white women played a passive or minimal role in slaveholding. It was published by Yale University Press and released on February 19, 2019. For the book Jones-Rogers received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Merle Curti Social History Award from the Organization of American Historians.[2][3]

  1. ^ Varon, Elizabeth R. (2019-02-28). "White women's long-overlooked complicity in the brutality of slaveholding". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-07-14.
  2. ^ McDonald, Soraya Nadia (2019-03-15). "In 'They Were Her Property,' a historian shows that white women were deeply involved in the slave economy". Andscape. Retrieved 2020-07-14.
  3. ^ Sehgal, Parul (2019-02-26). "White Women Were Avid Slaveowners, a New Book Shows". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-07-14.