"Mississippi Women: Their Histories, Their Lives—Volume 2 includes vibrant chapters from a number of prominent scholars in the field of southern history as well as from those who are just bringing their work to light. With this second book, a smart complement to the first volume, the authors analyze the forces of history in the lives of Mississippi women while demonstrating women's agency in a sophisticated and analytical manner. From Choctaw and Chickasaw tribal history to the International Women's Year Conferences of 1977, Mississippi offers a fascinating window into the world of southern women."
—Elizabeth Hayes Turner, author of Women and Gender in the New South, 1865–1945
"The essays in this volume confound our assumptions about Mississippi women and broaden our understanding of southern womanhood in general. The authors capture the breadth and diversity of women’s experiences in the state from eighteenth century Chickasaw and Choctaw women to nineteenth and twentieth century black and white women—all restricted by or challenging social, economic and political constraints. This is an outstanding study of women’s history as southern history."
—Beverly Greene Bond, editor of Tennessee Women: Their Lives and Times
Volume 1 of Mississippi Women enriched our understanding of women’s roles in the state’s history through profiles of notable, though often neglected, individuals. Volume 2 explores the historical forces that have shaped women’s lives in Mississippi. Covering an expanse of time from early European settlement through the course of the twentieth century, the essays in the second volume acknowledge the state’s diverse cultural and physical landscapes as they discuss how issues of race, gender, and class affected women’s lives in various private and public spheres. Essays on the state’s early history focus on such topics as Choctaw and Chickasaw women’s influence on Native American society and tribal councils, daily life for free black women in slaveholding Natchez, and the efforts of white Protestant women to establish churches on the frontier. Several essays cast new light on legal concerns, including two on the pivotal Married Women’s Property Act of 1839, while…
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