They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

Jones-Rogers posits that white women significantly contributed to the growth of slavery as a domestic market in the 19th century. She remarks on the growth of the slave trade as it morphed from an international phenomenon into a domestic market in which enslaved people born in the United States are exchanged. According to Jones-Rogers, the slave market grew more formal and regimented, a development that white women were enthusiastic about.

Jones-Rogers criticizes the narrative of slavery’s expansion in the 19th century as  “masculinized” (126). She argues that women are mere footnotes in this narrative. In response, Jones-Rogers offers the main point of Chapter 6: that women were active and enthusiastic contributors to the development of the slave marketplace.

Jones-Rogers proceeds to list the various capacities in which white women across all socioeconomic classes participated in and benefitted from the new slave marketplace of the 19th century. The slave market was not hidden but commonplace. White women could easily access slave trading as traders clearly marked their establishments. Jones-Rogers says that enslaved people acknowledged women as having the money and authority to purchase them. The author also addresses evidence from bills of sale and slave traders’ account books that show women bought and sold enslaved people regularly.

Jones-Rogers uses the firsthand accounts of formerly enslaved people to demonstrate the active role white women played in the slave trade. She recounts how “formerly enslaved people remembered these women as astute, sophisticated, and calculating slave-market consumers” with “unique slave-market selection processes and buying habits” (134-35). These witnesses describe the ambitious nature of these white women who sought out the purchase of enslaved infants and children—whom white men did not want to buy because they thought them too burdensome—at low prices (135). White women not only benefitted personally from transactions in slave markets but also profited from being intermediaries and agents for other buyers including men and women alike, some of them slave traders. Jones-Rogers emphasizes that white women were capable of conducting business in the slave markets in person, often attending slave auctions.

Jones-Rogers highlights the various reasons why white women chose to engage in the slave trade. While some women sold enslaved people due to family responsibilities, others did so because the enslaved people were male, too old, or simply perceived by their owner to be disagreeable. White women often sold enslaved people to unburden “themselves of laborers they deemed unworthy of their continued investment, and in most cases, they did not care about the lasting consequences such decisions had upon enslaved people’s lives” (142-43). In some cases, the reasons for selling enslaved people included attempts to distance themselves from biological connections between enslaved people and their owners. Jones-Rogers also provides evidence of enslaved men being sold due to their lighter complexions, which fueled fears that the men might pass as white and run away. Finally, Jones-Rogers states that white women also sold enslaved people because it was profitable.

Jones-Rogers then transitions into an exploration of the role white women played in creating brothels filled with enslaved women and participating in “the fancy trade—the sector of the market that catered to white men who sought to purchase sexual slaves and concubines” (147). Although prostitution was not a crime, women could be charged with the related crime of “keeping a disorderly house” (148). It was not the white brothel-keeping women who were often held responsible for these crimes, but the enslaved women forced to work in these brothels. Jones-Rogers condemns the acts of these white brothel keepers whom she states facilitated acts of sexual violence against enslaved people, male and female, for the purpose of producing enslaved children. For Jones-Rogers, it is clear that enslaved women were not given a choice but to engage in this sex work.

Jones-Rogers concludes Chapter 6 with a clear statement on the active and damaging role white women played perpetuating the institution of slavery. Jones-Rogers proclaims: “The slave-owning women who engaged in slave-market activities were far more than begrudgingly complicit bystanders on the margins of the peculiar institution” (150).