Honors Theses
Advisor
Ashleigh Lawrence-Sanders
Department
History
Publication Date
4-1-2022
Document Type
Honors Thesis
Abstract
My historical research seeks to reveal how exactly White European notions of Blackness, womanhood, and motherhood (and the intersections of all three) were inscribed onto the lived experiences of enslaved women and mothers from the early Atlantic period through the antebellum era. What emerges from a critical analysis of archival omissions are Black women’s voices and experiences—who demonstrate over and over that they resisted and are resisting. I will demonstrate how other people’s rhetorical use of Black motherhood constructs and shapes the lived experience of these women and creates a tension between the ‘ideal’ Black mother and those that don’t fit into the prescribed narrative. Furthermore, I will argue that looking at this history through a Black Maternalist framework reveals that motherhood characterized these women’s resistance, and that these women fought to gain freedom through their radical acts of maternalism.
Permission Statement
This item is protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S. Code) and may only be used for noncommercial, educational, and scholarly purposes.
Keywords
Undergraduate research
Disciplines
History
eCommons Citation
Biesecker-Mast, Anna, "Narratives of the Black Mother in the U.S.: Exploring the Black Maternalist Framework in Black Activism" (2022). Honors Theses. 346.
https://ecommons.udayton.edu/uhp_theses/346
