Work, Status, and Social Mobility

Abstract

Chapter 2 contains a comprehensive examination of the work and socioeconomic mobility of mid-century narrators while they were still enslaved. The work that narrators did before they achieved freedom and the leverage and mobility that many gained from that work significantly affected their self-estimates and their views of other slaves as well as slaveholders and nonslaveholders. Most mid-century narratives were produced by former skilled slaves, whose stories often dramatize how personal self-respect and pride, earned privileges, and mounting aspirations for opportunities and autonomy led to various kinds of resistance to control and, eventually, to freedom. This chapter also examines the least studied of the mid-century narratives, those by former agricultural workers (field hands) to explore their perspectives on work, exploitation, and freedom. The chapter concludes by examining the roles of paternalism, privilege, and intraracial—particularly family—relationships in the early life of Frederick Douglass.