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Stolen Childhood, Second Edition
Slave Youth in Nineteenth-Century America
by Wilma King
Published by: Indiana University Press
16 b&w illus.
- eBook
- 9780253112637
- Published: December 1995
$9.99
- eBook
- 9780253001078
- Published: June 2011
$9.99
Other Retailers:
"King provides a jarring snapshot of children living in bondage. This compellingly written work is a testament to the strength and resilience of the children and their parents." —Kathleen Hughes, Booklist
"Stolen Childhood is a wonderful book with manifold strengths of research and analysis." —Nell Irvin Painter, The Journal of Southwest Georgia History
"She [King] takes an enormous step toward filling some of the voids in the literature of slavery. . . ." —Adele Logan Alexander, Washington Post Book World
"Wilma King has done a service in correcting a major problem in slave history. Her writing style gracefully conveys both the joys and the terrors of youth under slavery." —David Libby, Southern Historian
"King's deeply researched, well-written, passionate study places children and young adults at center stage in the North American slave experience." —J. D. Smith, Choice
"Stolen Childhood is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the slave experience in the United States." —V. P. Franklin, History of Education Quarterly
"Stolen Childhood" mines the major American archives in order to present the ways in which enslaved men and women created a semblance of family life and cultural heritage." —Mary Warner Marien, Christian Science Monitor
Wilma King argues that childhood was stolen from these children—they were forced into the workplace at an early age, subjected to arbitrary plantation authority and punishment, and were separated from family. King follows the slave child's experience through work, play and leisure, education, socialization, resistance to slavery, and the transition to freedom.
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction
1. "You know that I am one man that do love his children": Slave Children and Youth in the
Family and Community
2. "Us ain't never idle": The World of Work
3. When day is done: Play and Leisure
4. "Knowledge unfits a child to be a slave": Temporal and Spiritual Education
5. "What Has Ever Become of My Presus Little Girl": The Traumas and Tragedies of Slave
Children and Youth
6. "Free at last": The Quest for Freedom
7. "There's a better day a-coming": The Transition from Slavery to Freedom
Appendices
Notes
Bibliography
Index
WILMA KING is the Strickland Professor of African American history in the Department of History at University of Missouri in Columbia. She is also the editor of A Northern Woman in the Plantation South: Letters of Tryphena Blanche Holder Fox, 1856–1876.
King's work is fresh and accessible. It fills key gaps in scholarship on slavery and would make for a worthwhile read for anyone from the casual reader of history to the scholar.
~Tennessee Libraries
Drawing on extensive new scholarship and sources, [King] adds significant new demographic information regarding slave children and broadens her scope to include slave children born in the North and in urban centers. . . . Essential.
~Choice
[T]his is an ambitious book that not only pioneered the history of African-American child slavery, but also made a significant impact on the discourse addressing slavery in the USA more generally. . . a masterful work.
~Slavery and Abolition
[Until] the appearance of this book, no monograph had focused exclusively on the many topics relating to the enslaved young.April 1997
~American Historical Review
[King's] cogent general picture offeres a valuable entree into the topic, and provides a sound frame of reference for the temporally or spacially more specific research that her study should generate.39.3 Fall 1998
~American Studies
King has performed a valuable service to the historiographies of slavery and of children. It is important to be reminded that slaves were children before they became the men and women who form our more familiar images of slavery.Summer 1996
~Register Kentucky Historical Society
Wilma King's book is a welcome addition to the literature. . . The author compares the hardships of slave childhood with those created by war or siege.Fall 1996
~GEORGIA HISTORICAL QUARTERLY
Stolen Childhood provides a broad overview of slave childhood throughout the nineteenth-century South and moves beyond the Civil War years to demonstrate that the brutality directed against enslaved children did not end with emancipation.May 2000
~Journal of Southern History
Stolen Childhood mines the major American archives in order to present the ways in which enslaved men and women created a semblance of family life and cultural heritage.
~Christian Science Monitor
Stolen Childhood is a welcome addition to the burgeoning literature on the slave experience in the United States.
~History of Education Quarterly
[King] takes an enormous step toward filling some of the voids in the literature of slavery.
~Washington Post Book World
Stolen Childhood is a wonderful book with manifold strengths of research and analysis.
~Nell Irvin Painter
King's deeply researched, well-written, passionate study places children and young adults at center stage in the North American slave experience.
~Choice
Wilma King has done a service in correcting a major problem in slave history. Her writing style gracefully conveys both the joys and the terrors of youth under slavery.
~Southern Historian
King provides a jarring snapshot of children living in bondage. This compellingly written work is a testament to the strength and resilience of the children and their parents.
~Booklist