Annotated Bibliography
Anderson, Margaret L. and Patricia Hill Collins. “Preface.”
Race, Class, and Gender: An
Anthology.
Anderson and Collins provide in their preface excellent definitions for the
literary terms of race, class, and gender.
In addition, the text provides insight into the dichotomy of race,
class, and gender in America, how these terms interplay in the real life
experiences of African American women, and the institutional structures that
allow them to continue to thwart the profess of black women into the twenty
first century. This text affirms my
theoretical basis for the dissertation: that the success of black women in
family, education, and financial matters are adversely affect
by the labels of race and the stereotypes that accompany them.
Berlin, Ira. Slaves Without Masters: The Free Negro in the Antebellum South.
Berlin’s is one of few texts that examines how free blacks, such as David
Walker, lived as free blacks in the South before the Civil War, including the
complex structure of their freedom and the brutal enforcement of their racial
enslavement. In addition, the text
provides a closer reading of nineteenth century court documents and legal cases
of African Americans who used the penal system to obtain their Constitutional
rights as free people of color. Such
close readings provide my writing with a framework within which to explore and
explain the hierarchy of race in
Blassingame, John W. The
Slave Community:
Blassingame’s text is known as the pinnacle text
regarding the intricacies of plantation life among slaves. In his book he provides readers with very
narrow and specific insights into race, class, and gender among African
American slaves living on plantations without any outside influences except
masters, overseers, and Christianity. Using
this framework his work affirms my theories about the “color line” that
continues to exist in the twenty first century and how that color-consciousness
adversely affects the African American community.