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By Root 1210 0

than the man. It was the woman’s house, the children were entirely hers, etc., etc.” Since emancipation, however, Laura Towne had observed the frequency with which black leaders urged black men “to get the women into their proper place—never to tell them anything of their concerns, etc., etc.; and the notion of being bigger than women generally, is just now inflating the conceit of the males to an amazing degree.”49

If the spectacle of black marriages amused former masters and mistresses, the inclination of black women “to play the lady” did not, particularly when it made it more difficult for white women to do so. On a Mississippi plantation, where the black women suddenly refused to work, the employer (who had been their former master) ordered them to resume their positions in the field or leave the premises. They left. What whites contemptuously called “playing the lady” occasionally took the form of black women cavorting about town in the cast-off finery of their last mistress. Despite these much-publicized examples, however, most black women charged with “playing the lady” had simply opted to spend more time in their own households and made labor arrangements that would permit them to do so. A Georgia planter, for example, managed to hire four “good hands,” only to discover that their wives had no intention of cooking for him, at least not until they had discussed the matter with him. Aware of his inability to hire a cook, the women took advantage of their bargaining position and exacted promises to pay them “their own price” and, equally important, to permit them to divide the housework and cooking among themselves. Presumably, this arrangement would have given each of them ample time to meet her own domestic responsibilities. Such experiences, not at all uncommon, revealed that many black women, rather than withdraw from work altogether, used the threat quite successfully to obtain better terms from an employer.50

Few black leaders, clergymen, or editors would have disputed the “plain counsels” offered by a Freedmen’s Bureau officer to the emancipated black woman about her proper role in the home. Before marriage, she should learn to knit, sew, mend clothes, bake bread, keep a clean house, cultivate a garden, and read and write, while at the same time remaining “a true woman”—that is, protecting her chastity. After marriage, she would be expected to take proper care of her person, to appear always clean, neat, and tidy, and to look “as pretty as possible.” That was simply another way of saying that black women should aspire to be like their white counterparts and abide by the conventional wisdom and experience of mid-nineteenth-century American society. Not all black women, however, willingly assented to such a narrow definition of their roles, few of them had the means to become “ladies” of leisure, and some did not look upon white women as the most desirable models to imitate; indeed, their previous experiences with white “ladies” had not necessarily filled them with awe, admiration, or even respect. Whatever black men might have preferred, most black women could not afford to withdraw from outside labor after emancipation; many continued to work in the fields alongside their men, while others moved into the towns in the hope of obtaining more remunerative employment.51

Out of economic necessity and the experience of slavery, black women fashioned a place for themselves in the post-emancipation family and community. Invariably, it would be a more important position than that occupied by their white counterparts. If fewer black women labored in the fields, they often cared for the family garden plot, worked as washerwomen or wet nurses, and performed other jobs that were necessary to supplement the family income. If they deferred to the men and absented themselves from the political discussions, they might still guard the rifles stacked outside the meeting places. And in the waning years of Reconstruction, when whites threatened to regain power, black women in Charleston were sighted “carrying axes or hatchets