"Swing the Sickle for the Harvest is Ripe": Gender and Slavery in Antebellum Georgia

Women, Gender, and Sexuality in American History

by Daina Ramey Berry

 Examining how labor and economy shaped the family life of bondwomen and bondmen in the antebellum South "Swing the Sickle for the Harvest Is Ripe" compares the work, family, and economic experiences of enslaved women and men in upcountry and lowland Georgia during the nineteenth century. Mining planters' daybooks, plantation records, and a wealth of other sources, Daina Ramey Berry shows how slaves' experiences on large plantations, which were essentially self-contained, closed communities, contrasted with those on small plantations, where planters' interests in sharing their workforce allowed slaves more open, fluid communications. By inviting readers into slaves' internal lives through her detailed examination of domestic violence, separation and sale, and forced breeding, Berry also reveals important new ways of understanding what it meant to be a female or male slave, as well as how public and private aspects of slave life influenced each other on the plantation.

A volume in the series Women in American History, edited by Anne Firor Scott, Susan Armitage, Susan K. Cahn, and Deborah Gray White

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Gender, African American

256 pages, Hardcover

First published July 27, 2007

About the author

Daina Ramey Berry is an associate professor of history and African and African diaspora studies, and the George W. Littlefield Fellow in American History, at the University of Texas at Austin. An award-winning historian, she is also a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians.

Author photo: Brenda Ladd Photography

Reviews

[Travis Williams]

An interesting look at the role of enslaved women in antebellum Georgia. A must read for all Georgians.