Herbert Gutman has assembled through great research one of the best studies of black family life during the era of slavery.So many folks love to throw out statistics about how there are so many single black mothers & irresponsible fathers.They act as if there is no such thing as a black family.This textbook gives you the history of black families whose ties could not be broken by the horrors of slavery.It is a very important piece of work.Here's a more extensive review of the book from Associated Content:
"Gutman challenges the views of historians like E. Franklin Frazier, who asserted that "The crisis accompanying emancipation tended to destroy all traditional ways of thinking…promiscuous sexual relations…became the rule" (Gutman 9). Gutman asserts that, "The familial condition of the typical ex-slave differed greatly from that emphasized by Frazier…the typical ex-slave family was composed of a poor husband, his wife and their children" (Gutman 9). Gutman shows that the end of slavery posed new challenges from African Americans. The thirteenth amendment abolished the individual ownership of one person by another but did not remove the culture and institutional system of slavery, making life oppressive for African Americans.
After an initial attempt to force the ex-slaves into labor on the plantations failed, the system of farm tenancy, or sharecropping emerged by the end of the century. The majority of African Americans were to work under this regime for most of the first half of the twentieth century. Also, during this period, a minority moved to the cities, where they faced, in the North, racist resistance and exclusion from the emerging industrial revolution.
As the book reveals, in adapting to these new environments, African Americans drew upon two sects of cultural resources: those they had developed during the period of slavery, and those of the White majority. The nuclear family was threatened; however, a family unit still existed in most cases. According to Gutman, "Migration and the changing composition of the Afro-American household (especially the relative decline of the nuclear household) among New York City blacks in 1905 were not evidence that husbands and fathers were less frequently with the family than in the South in 1880 or 1900" (452).
After emancipation, Black families had a dual responsibility. They had to teach their children how to be proud of themselves, how to work hard, and how to achieve. In addition, they had to teach their children how to get along in a White world, how to get along with White people, how to get along in a situation that sometimes defined them negatively, how to get along in situations that were not always fair to them. They taught them how to get along without being bitter and losing their own humanity. Black families still have this dual responsibility and most have succeeded in teaching their children how to manage those two worlds. According to Gutman, "Enslavement was harsh and constricted the enslaved. But it did not destroy their capacity to adapt and sustain the vital familial and kin associations and beliefs that served as the underpinning of a developing African American culture" (463).
Gutman's book is a necessary part of the literature on the black family and the impact of slavery. His book illustrates that out of slavery grew a spirit of achievement and survival and humanity. The heritage of African Americans came from Africa and a sense of belonging to each other, a sense of responsibility to the other. The West African proverb, "It takes a whole village to raise a child," illustrates the idea of the community as the family. Gutman shows that the black family was supported by the larger society. This collective responsibility still exists for the African American family. Also, from West Africa, the idea of responsibility for kin-folk was very strong. So blood ties are still very strong in the African American community, some-times stronger than marital ties. Negative portrayals of the African American family continue to dominate in the media. These stereotypes can be countered with a reading of Gutman's book, because it provides a positive affirmation of the strength of the black family despite obstacles and adversity, which consisted of: two and a half centuries of powerlessness, sexual degradation, male emasculation, childhood neglect, legal nonexistence, in which being raped by anyone white was not a crime, and racist oppression. Gutman's book is a demonstration that slaves cared deeply for their kinsmen and went to great lengths, in spite of the restraints of slave owners, to maintain ties with their kin, and after slavery, to find long lost relatives."(END OF EXCERPT)Read the entire review here.
