Chained to the rock of adversity
Subtitle: to be free, Black & female in the Old South
By: edited by Virginia Meacham Gould.
Contributors: Gould, Virginia Meacham.
Series: Southern voices from the past
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Athens
Language: eng
Number of pages: 96
Subjects: Johnson family -- Archives; African American women -- Mississippi -- Natchez Region -- History -- 19th century -- Sources; African American women -- Louisiana -- New Orleans Region -- History -- 19th century -- Sources; African American women -- Mississippi -- Natchez Region -- Social life and customs -- Sources; African American women -- Louisiana -- New Orleans Region -- Social life and customs -- Sources; Free African Americans -- Mississippi -- Natchez Region -- History -- 19th century -- Sources; Free African Americans -- Louisiana -- New Orleans Region -- History -- 19th century -- Sources; Natchez Region (Miss.) -- Race relations -- Sources; New Orleans Region (La.) -- Race relations -- Sources
Description: Chained to the Rock of Adversity offers valuable insight into the lives of the South's free women of color, using personal letters and a diary to tell an extraordinary story.

The letters were written to two women, Ann Battles Johnson and her eldest daughter Anna, between 1844 and 1899. Ann was the wife of the prosperous barber and businessman William T. Johnson of Natchez, Mississippi. Most of the letters were from family members who lived scattered up and down the Mississippi River, from Natchez to New Orleans. Nearly all were from women. The diary was written by Catharine Geraldine Johnson, another of Ann and William's daughters.

A freed slave herself, Ann Johnson became the head of her family and a slaveholder when her husband died in 1851. As the letters reveal, her days were filled with the often tedious and sometimes overwhelming duties assigned to slaveholding women.

Taken together the letters and diary depict a tight-knit network of family and friends that reached across Mississippi and Louisiana. They also show a family aware of its precarious position in society, feared and poorly treated by most white neighbors and resented by other blacks. Editor Virginia Meacham Gould provides an extensive introduction, a cast of characters, identifying notes, and a brief afterword tracing the Johnson family to the present day.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.