Labor of love, labor of sorrow : black women, work and the family, from slavery to the present

The forces that shaped the institution of slavery in the American South endured, albeit in altered form, long after slavery was abolished. Toiling in sweltering Virginia tobacco factories or in the kitchens of white families in Chicago, black women felt a stultifying combination of racial discrimination and sexual prejudice. And yet, in their efforts to sustain family ties, they shared a common purpose with wives and mothers of all classes. In Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, historian Jacqueline Jones offers a powerful account of the changing role of black women, lending a voice to an unsung struggle from the depths of slavery to the ongoing fight for civil rights. "My mother was much of a woman" : slavery, 1830-1860 -- Enslaved women becoming freedwomen : the Civil War and Reconstruction -- "Bent backs and laboring muscles" : in the rural South, 1880-1915 -- Between the Southern cotton field and the Northern ghetto : the urban South, 1880-1915 -- "To get out of this land of sufring" : black women migrants to the North, 1900-1930 -- Harder times : the Great Depression -- The roots of two revolutions, 1940-1955 -- The struggle confirmed and transformed, 1955-1980 -- Crosscurrents of past and present, 1980-2009.