Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege
Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege: Amanda America Dickson, 1849-1893
Kent Anderson Leslie
Copyright Date: 1995
Published by: University of Georgia Press
Pages: 248
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46ngbj
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Book Info
Woman of Color, Daughter of Privilege
Book Description:

This fascinating story of Amanda America Dickson, born the privileged daughter of a white planter and an unconsenting slave in antebellum Georgia, shows how strong-willed individuals defied racial strictures for the sake of family. Kent Anderson Leslie uses the events of Dickson's life to explore the forces driving southern race and gender relations from the days of King Cotton through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and New South eras. Although legally a slave herself well into her adolescence, Dickson was much favored by her father and lived comfortably in his house, receiving a genteel upbringing and education. After her father died in 1885 Dickson inherited most of his half-million dollar estate, sparking off two years of legal battles with white relatives. When the Georgia Supreme Court upheld the will, Dickson became the largest landowner in Hancock County, Georgia, and the wealthiest black woman in the post-Civil War South. Kent Anderson Leslie's portrayal of Dickson is enhanced by a wealth of details about plantation life; the elaborate codes of behavior for men and women, blacks and whites in the South; and the equally complicated circumstances under which racial transgressions were sometimes ignored, tolerated, or even accepted.

eISBN: 978-0-8203-3717-3
Subjects: History, Sociology
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Table of Contents
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-vi)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. vii-viii)
  3. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. ix-xiv)
  4. Introduction
    Introduction (pp. 1-14)

    ONE DAY IN THE MIDDLE of February 1849, David Dickson rode across his fallow fields. A wealthy man in his early forties, large and heavyset, he wore his long black hair straight, Indian style. As he rode, he spotted a young female slave playing in a field. Dickson knew the slave. She belonged to his mother. She was, in fact, a great favorite of his mother’s. Deliberately he rode up beside the slave child and reached down and swung her up behind him on his saddle and, as a member of her family would remember 140 years later, “that was...

  5. 1 Exceptions to the Rules
    1 Exceptions to the Rules (pp. 15-31)

    IF IT IS TRUE that public sentiment, not abstract ideology, controlled the amount of miscegenation that took place in the nineteenth-century South, then what factors combined to create a place where an elite white male could rape a slave child and raise the offspring of that act of violence in his own household? If we include the sentiments of the slave community in this observation, we are left with a complex question. A partial answer lies in the geography, history, and socioeconomic arrangements that evolved in Amanda Dickson’s place, a place where she was both protected and trapped. What factors...

  6. 2 A Story
    2 A Story (pp. 32-75)

    DAVID, JULIA FRANCES, AND AMANDA AMERICA DICKSON’S stories represent threads that intertwine to form a pattern, a pattern distorted by the tensions between racial ideology and family, between paternalism and exploitation, and between power and the control of power in an interdependent community. As a consequence, Amanda America Dickson’s life unfolded within the boundaries of her father’s social and economic power, her mother’s conflicting loyalties, and her own evolving sense of self. The story of this family’s struggles spans almost all of the nineteenth century, bracketing the beginning and the end of the plantation regime in Hancock County, the Civil...

  7. 3 The Dickson Will
    3 The Dickson Will (pp. 76-104)

    SCHOLARS HAVE ARGUED that although the power of the master constituted the linchpin of slavery as a social system, no one satisfactorily defined the limits of that power. Theoretically, this tension was resolved in favor of the interest of the ruling class; “the collective conscience of the ruling class must prevail over the individual interests constituting that class.” This does not appear to have been the case with David Dickson. This master-father both raised his mulatto daughter inside the boundaries of his family and legally appointed her as his successor, making her, in some sense, an oxymoronic member of the...

  8. 4 The Death of a Lady
    4 The Death of a Lady (pp. 105-134)

    DAVID DICKSON’S DEATH created a change of a cosmic order for Amanda America Dickson. She was no longer protected by her white father or controlled by his powerful presence. What choices faced this thirty-six-year-old woman who described herself as an orphan? Her first concern was to address the legal implications of her father’s will. Would the excluded white relatives, or caveators, be able to overthrow the will? A second concern must have been for her own safety on the Dickson plantation. David Dickson’s gin houses had been burned twice, once in 1871 and once shortly before his death, in October...

  9. [Illustrations]
    [Illustrations] (pp. None)
  10. Appendix A DOCUMENTS
    Appendix A DOCUMENTS (pp. 135-146)
  11. Appendix B GENEALOGICAL CHARTS
    Appendix B GENEALOGICAL CHARTS (pp. 147-148)
  12. Appendix C TABLES
    Appendix C TABLES (pp. 149-154)
  13. Notes
    Notes (pp. 155-178)
  14. Bibliography
    Bibliography (pp. 179-212)
  15. Index
    Index (pp. 213-225)
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