Abstract
There are few studies of post-emancipation-period African American agrarian landowners because their numbers were small in contrast to those African Americans who remained landless. Archaeologists’ emphasis on sharecroppers has overlooked the socioeconomic diversity within the African American community and minimized the importance of land ownership to the assertion of black freedom. Using the ceramics recovered from the Ransom and Sarah Williams farmstead, an historical African American site in central Texas, I show that land ownership enhanced the lives of freed African Americans by enabling them to become self-sufficient. This self-sufficiency was an important strategy that ensured their racial and economic autonomy within a precarious agricultural economy. However, their position was liminal because racism precluded them from using their landholdings in any way beyond the achievement of self-sufficiency. Therefore, land ownership was not economically emancipatory because African Americans were not able to build wealth.
Extracto
Hay pocos estudios de propietarios afroamericanos de tierras agrarias posteriores al período de emancipación porque su número era pequeño en contraste con los afroamericanos que se quedaron sin tierra. El énfasis de los arqueólogos en los aparceros ha pasado por alto la diversidad socioeconómica dentro de la comunidad afroamericana y ha minimizado la importancia de la propiedad de la tierra para la afirmación de la libertad de los negros. Utilizando la cerámica recuperada de la granja Ransom y Sarah Williams, un sitio afroamericano histórico en el centro de Texas, demuestro que la propiedad de la tierra mejoró la vida de los afroamericanos liberados al permitirles ser autosuficientes. Esta autosuficiencia era una estrategia importante que aseguraba su autonomía racial y económica dentro de una economía agrícola precaria. Sin embargo, su posición era liminal porque el racismo les impedía usar sus tierras más allá del logro de la autosuficiencia. Por lo tanto, la propiedad de la tierra no era económicamente emancipadora porque los afroamericanos no podían generar riqueza.
Résumé
Il existe fort peu d'études sur la période postérieure à l'émancipation des propriétaires terriens africain-américains car leur nombre était réduit par rapport à ceux parmi les Africain-américains qui ne possédaient aucune terre. L'accent mis par les archéologues sur les métayers a omis de prendre en compte la diversité socio-économique au sein de la communauté africaine-américaine. L'importance de la propriété terrienne pour l'affirmation d'une liberté des noirs s'en est trouvée minimisée. Grâce aux céramiques retrouvées dans la ferme de Ransom et Sarah Williams, un site africain-américain historique dans le centre du Texas, je démontre que la propriété terrienne venait améliorer l'existence des Africains-américains libres en leur permettant d'accéder à l'auto-suffisance. Cette auto-suffisance représentait une stratégie importante garantissant leur autonomie raciale et économique au sein d'une économie agricole précaire. Cependant, leur situation était liminaire car le racisme les empêchait d'utiliser leurs terres d'une manière quelconque au-delà de la réalisation d'une auto-suffisance. Par conséquent, la propriété terrienne n'était pas émancipatrice d'un point de vue économique car les Africain-américains n'étaient pas en mesure de construire de la richesse.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Adams, William Hampton (editor) 1980 Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community. Report to Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Adkins, Howard G. 1980 The Postbellum Waverly Community. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 101–118. Report to Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Agbe-Davies, Anna 2007 Practicing African-American Archaeology in the Atlantic World. In Archaeology of Atlantic Africa and the African Diaspora, Akin Ogundiran and Toyin Falola, editors, pp. 413–425. Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
Babiarz, Jennifer J. 2011 White Privilege and Silencing within the Heritage Landscape: Race and the Practice of Cultural Resource Management. In The Materiality of Freedom: Archaeologies of Postemancipation Life, Jodi A. Barnes, editor, pp. 47–57. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.
Baker, Vernon G. 1980 Archaeological Visibility of Afro-American Culture: An Example from Black Lucy’s Garden, Andover, Massachusetts. In Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 29–37. Baywood Publishing Company, Farmingdale, NY.
Barile, Kerri S. 2004 Race, the National Register, and Cultural Resource Management: Creating an Historic Context for Postbellum Sites. Historical Archaeology 38(1):90–100.
Barnes, Jodi A. 2011a Land Rich and Cash Poor: The Materiality of Poverty in Appalachia. Historical Archaeology 45(3):26–40.
Barnes, Jodi A. (editor) 2011b The Materiality of Freedom: Archaeologies of Postemancipation Life. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.
Bastian, Beverly E. 1999 Elmwood: The Archaeology of Twentieth-Century African-American Pioneers in the Great North Woods. In “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, Theresa A. Singleton, editor, pp. 283–295. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
Bartovics, Albert F., and William Hampton Adams 1980 Appendix––Ceramic Typology. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 505–533. Report to Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Belanus, Betty 1980a Independent Renting, 1913–1930. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 143–154. Report to Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Belanus, Betty 1980b Memories of the Plantation, 1865–1913. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 127–142. Report to Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Bower, Beth Anne, and Byron Rushing 1980 The African Meeting House: The Center for the 19th-Century Afro-American Community in Boston. In Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 69–75. Baywood Publishing Company, Farmingdale, NY.
Boyd, Douglas K., and Aaron R. Norment 2015 Descriptions of Material Culture from the Williams Farmstead. In The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas, Vol. 1, Douglas K. Boyd, Aaron R. Norment, Terri Myers, Maria Franklin, and Nedra Lee, editors, pp. 233–365. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Reports of Investigations, No. 173. Austin, TX.
Boyd, Douglas K., Aaron R. Norment, Terri Myers, and Maria Franklin 2015 Post-Emancipation Transitions of the Williams Family: Summary and Conclusions. In The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas. Vol. 2, Douglas K. Boyd, Aaron R. Norment, Terri Myers, Maria Franklin, Nedra Lee, Leslie L. Bush, and Brian S. Shaffer, editors, pp. 537–642. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Reports of Investigations, No. 173. Austin, TX.
Bridges, Sarah T., and Bert Salwen 1980 Weeksville: The Archaeology of a Black Urban Community. In Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America, Robert L. Schuyler, editor, pp. 38–47. Baywood Publishing Company, Farmingdale, NY.
Brown, Kenneth L. 2004 Ethnographic Analogy, Archaeology, and the African Diaspora: Perspectives from a Tenant Community. Historical Archaeology 38(1):79–89.
Brown, Kenneth L. 2011 BaKongo Cosmograms, Christian Crosses, or None of the Above: An Archaeology of African American Spiritual Adaptations into the 1920s. In The Materiality of Freedom: Archaeologies of Postemancipation Life, Jodi A. Barnes, editor, pp. 209–227. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.
Bush, Leslie L. 2015 Macrobotanical Remains. In The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas, Vol. 1, Douglas K. Boyd, Aaron R. Norment, Terri Myers, Maria Franklin, and Nedra Lee, editors, pp. 385–392. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Reports of Investigations, No. 173. Austin, TX.
Cantrell, Gregg 1990 Racial Violence and Reconstruction Politics in Texas, 1867–1868. Southwestern Historical Quarterly 93(3):333–355.
Carlson, Shawn Bonath 1990 The Persistence of Traditional Lifeways in Central Texas. Historical Archaeology 24(4):50–59.
Cox, LaWanda 1958 The Promise of Land for the Freedmen. Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45(3):418–440.
Crass, David Colin, and Mark J. Brooks 1995 Cotton and Black Draught: Consumer Behavior on a Postbellum Farm. University of South Carolina, South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, Savannah River Archaeological Research Program, Columbia.
Crouch, Barry 1984 A Spirit of Lawlessness: White Violence, Texas Blacks, 1865–1868. Journal of Social History 18(2):217–232.
Crouch, Barry 1990 “Unmanacling” Texas Reconstruction: A Twenty-Year Perspective. Southwestern Historical Quarterly 93(3):275–302.
Crouch, Barry 1993 “All the Vile Passions”: The Texas Black Code of 1866. Southwestern Historical Quarterly 97(1):12–34.
Davis, Allison, Burleigh B. Gardner, and Mary R. Gardner 1941 Deep South: A Social Anthropological Study of Caste and Class. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Deagan, Kathleen A., and Jane Landers 1999 Fort Mosé: Earliest Free African-American Town in the United States. In “I, Too, Am America”: Archaeological Studies of African-American Life, Theresa A. Singleton, editor, pp. 261–282. University Press of Virginia, Charlottesville.
DeCanio, Stephen J. 1979 Accumulation and Discrimination in the Postbellum South. Explorations in Economic History 16(2):182–206.
Deetz, James 1996 In Small Things Forgotten: The Archaeology of Early American Life, expanded and revised from 1977 edition. Doubleday, New York, NY.
Dixon, Kelly J. 2011 “A Place of Recreation of Our Own”: Archaeology of the Boston Saloon. In The Materiality of Freedom: Archaeologies of Postemancipation Life, Jodi A. Barnes, editor, pp. 115–135. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.
Douyard, Christopher M. 2014 Property, Capital, and Race: Rural Capitalism and Racialized Landscapes in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 3(2):175–196.
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1899 The Negro in the Cotton Belt: Some Social Sketches. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor 20:401–417. Washington, DC.
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1901 The Negro Landholder of Georgia. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor 35:647–777. Washington, DC.
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1904 The Negro Farmer. In Negroes in the United States, William Chamberlin Hunt, Walter Francis Wilcox, and W.E.B. Du Bois, editors, pp. 69–98. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 8. Washington, DC.
Du Bois, W.E.B. 1935 Black Reconstruction in America 1860–1880. Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, NY. Reprinted 1992 by Free Press, New York, NY.
Epperson, Terrence W. 2004 Critical Race Theory and the Archaeology of the African Diaspora. Historical Archaeology 38(1):101–108.
Fay, Kathryn O. 2018 Assumptions and Assemblages: Variation in Material Consumption across the Rural-Urban Divide. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 7(1):17–41.
Fennell, Christopher C. 2010 Damaging Detours: Routes, Racism, and New Philadelphia. Historical Archaeology 44(1):138–154.
Foner, Eric 2005 Forever Free: The Story of Emancipation and Reconstruction. Vintage, New York, NY.
Franklin, Maria 2012 “I’m Proud to Know What I Know”: Oral Narratives of Travis and Hays Counties, Texas, ca. 1920s–1960s. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Reports of Investigations, No. 165, Austin, TX, and Environmental Affairs Division, Texas Department of Transportation, Archaeological Studies Program Report, No. 136, Austin.
Franklin, Maria 2015 Narratives of Black Household Life in Rural Central Texas, ca. 1920s–1950s. In The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas, Vol. 1, Douglas K. Boyd, Aaron R. Norment, Terri Myers, Maria Franklin, and Nedra Lee, editors, pp. 439–488. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Reports of Investigations, No. 173. Austin, TX.
Franklin, Maria 2018 Antioch Colony and the Archaeology of Texas Freedmen Descendants. Paper presented at the 51st Conference on Historical and Underwater Archaeology, New Orleans, LA.
Franklin, Maria, and Nedra Lee 2019 Revitalizing Tradition and Instigating Change: Foodways at the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, 1871–1905. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 8(3):1–24.
Frazier, E. Franklin 1957 Black Bourgeoisie. Free Press, Glencoe, IL. Reprinted 1997 by Free Press, New York, NY.
Geismar, Joan H. 1980 Skunk Hollow: A Preliminary Statement on Archaeological Investigations at a 19th-Century Black Community. In Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America, Robert Schuyler, editor, pp. 60–68. Baywood Publishing Company, Farmingdale, NY.
Geismar, Joan H. 1982 The Archaeology of Social Disintegration in Skunk Hollow: A Nineteenth-Century Rural Black Community. Academic Press, New York, NY.
Gilbert, Jess, Gwen Sharp, and M. Sindy Pelin 2001 The Decline (and Revival?) of Black Farmers and Rural Landowners: A Review of the Research Literature. University of Wisconsin, Land Tenure Center, North America Series, No. 44. Madison.
González-Tennant, Edward 2018 The Rosewood Massacre: An Archaeology and History of Intersectional Violence. University Press of Florida, Gainesville.
Greer, Georgeanna H. 1981 American Stonewares: The Art and Craft of Utilitarian Potters. Schiffer, Atglen, PA.
Hahn, Steven 2003 A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
Harris, Cheryl I. 1993 Whiteness as Property. Harvard Law Review 106(8):1707–1791.
Higgs, Robert 1982 Accumulation of Property by Southern Blacks before World War I. American Economic Review 72(4):725–737.
Higgs, Robert 1984 Accumulation of Property by Southern Blacks before World War I: Reply. American Economic Review 74(4):777–781.
hooks, bell 1990 Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics. South End Press, Boston, MA.
Jones, Jacqueline 1992 The Dispossessed: America’s Underclasses from the Civil War to the Present. Basic, New York, NY.
Jurney, David H., and Randall W. Moir (editors) 1987 Historic Buildings, Material Culture, and People of the Prairie Margin: Architecture, Artifacts and Synthesis of Historic Archaeology. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Lebo, Susan A. 1987 Local Utilitarian Stonewares: A Diminishing Artifact Category. In Historic Buildings, Material Culture, and People of the Prairie Margin: Architecture, Artifacts and Synthesis of Historic Archaeology, David H. Jurney and Randall W. Moir, editors, pp. 121–142. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Ledbetter, Billy D. 1979 White Texans’ Attitudes toward the Political Equality of Negroes, 1865–1870. Phylon 40(3):253–263.
Leone, Mark, Cheryl Janifer LaRoche, and Jennifer J. Babiarz 2005 The Archaeology of Black Americans in Recent Times. Annual Review of Anthropology 34:575–598.
Litwack, Leon 1998 Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY.
Logan, Rayford 1954 The Negro in American Life and Thought: The Nadir, 1877–1901. Dial Press, New York, NY.
Magdol, Edward 1977 A Right to the Land: Essays on the Freedmen’s Community. Contributions in American History. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
Marable, Manning 1979 The Land Question in Historical Perspective: The Economics of Poverty in the Black Belt South, 1865–1920. In The Black Rural Landowner––Endangered Species: Social, Political and Economic Implications, Leo McGee and Robert Boone, editors, pp. 3–24. Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.
McDavid, Carol 2007 Beyond Strategy and Good Intentions: Archaeology, Race and White Privilege. In Archaeology as a Tool of Civic Engagement, Barbara J. Little and Paul A. Shackel, editors, pp. 67–88. AltaMira Press, Lanham, MD.
McGhee, Fred L. 2008 African American Oral History and Archeology: Perceptual Politics, Political Practice. Bulletin of the Texas Archeological Society 79:95–105.
Moir, Randall W. 1987 Refined Earthenwares and Rural Ceramic Traditions. In Historic Buildings, Material Culture, and People of the Prairie Margin: Architecture, Artifacts and Synthesis of Historic Archaeology, David H. Jurney and Randall W. Moir, editors, pp. 97–120. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Moir, Randall W., and David H. Jurney (editors) 1987 Pioneer Settlers, Tenant Farmers, and Communities. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Moir, Randall W., David H. Jurney, and Susan A. Lebo 1987 Farmstead Site Descriptions. In Pioneer Settlers, Tenant Farmers, and Communities, Randall W. Moir and David H. Jurney, editors, pp. 69–148. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Moir, Randall W., David H. Jurney, and L. Mark Raab 1987 Research Design for Data Recovery. In Pioneer Settlers, Tenant Farmers, and Communities, Randall W. Moir and David H. Jurney, editors, pp. 11–18. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Morris, Annelise 2017 Materialities of Homeplace. In Challenging Theories of Racism, Diaspora, and Agency in African America, William A. White III and Christopher A. Fennell, editors. Thematic issue, Historical Archaeology 51(1):28–42.
Myers, Terri 2015 Ransom and Sarah Williams: Freedman Farmers in Travis County. In The Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead: Post-Emancipation Transitions of an African American Family in Central Texas, Vol. 1, Douglas K. Boyd, Aaron R. Norment, Terri Myers, Maria Franklin, and Nedra Lee, editors, pp. 95–142. Prewitt and Associates, Inc., Reports of Investigations, No. 173. Austin, TX.
Nunley, M. Christopher 1987 Informant Interviews and the Oral Record. In Historic Buildings, Material Culture, and People of the Prairie Margin: Architecture, Artifacts and Synthesis of Historic Archaeology, David H. Jurney and Randall W. Moir, editors, pp. 201–210. Southern Methodist University, Institute for the Study of Earth and Man, Archaeology Research Program, Dallas, TX.
Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1987 Plantation Status and Consumer Choice: A Materialist Framework for Historical Archaeology. In Consumer Choice in Historical Archaeology, Suzanne M. Spencer-Wood, editor, pp. 121–137. Plenum Press, New York, NY.
Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1988 The Material Basis of the Postbellum Tenant Plantation: Historical Archaeology in the South Carolina Piedmont. University of Georgia Press, Athens.
Orser, Charles E., Jr. 1999 The Challenge of Race to American Historical Archaeology. American Anthropologist 100(3):661–668.
Oubre, Charles F. 1978 Forty Acres and a Mule: The Freedmen’s Bureau and Black Landownership. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
Palmer, David T. 2011 Archaeology of Jim Crow-Era African American Life on Louisiana’s Sugar Plantations. In The Materiality of Freedom: Archaeologies of Postemancipation Life, Jodi A. Barnes, editor, pp. 136–157. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.
Palus, Matthew M. 2011 Infrastructure and African American Achievement in Annapolis, Maryland, during the Twentieth Century. In The Materiality of Freedom: Archaeologies of Postemancipation Life, Jodi A. Barnes, editor, pp. 228–249. University of South Carolina Press, Columbia.
Pitre, Merline 1981 A Note on the Historiography of Blacks in the Reconstruction of Texas. Journal of Negro History 66(4):340–348.
Powdermaker, Hortense 1939 After Freedom: A Cultural Study in the Deep South. Viking Press, New York, NY.
Raper, Arthur F. 1968 Preface to Peasantry: A Tale of Two Black Belt Counties, expanded and revised from 1936 edition. Athenaeum, New York, NY.
Rice, Lawrence 1971 The Negro in Texas 1874–1900. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
Riordan Timothy B. 1980 Appendix––Glass Typology. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 475–504. Report to Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Riordan, Timothy B., and Betty J. Belanus 1980 The Belle Scott Site. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 167–180. Report to Heritage Farming Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Schuyler, Robert L. (editor) 1980 Archaeological Perspectives on Ethnicity in America: Afro-American and Asian American Culture History. Baywood Publishing Company, Farmingdale, NY.
Schweninger, Loren 1990 Black Property Owners in the South, 1790–1915. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Scott, Jannie Nicole 2016 Constructing Place, Building Community: The Archaeology and Geography of African American Freedmen’s Communities in Central Texas. Doctoral dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin. University Microfilms International, Ann Arbor, MI.
Scott, Jannie Nicole 2018 Place and Mobility in Shaping the Freedmen’s Community of Antioch Colony, Texas, 1870–1954. Journal of African Diaspora Archaeology and Heritage 7(1):1–16.
Shackel, Paul A. 2010 New Philadelphia: An Archaeology of Race in the Heartland. University of California Press, Berkeley.
Sharpless, Rebecca 1999 Fertile Ground, Narrow Choices: Women on Texas Cotton Farms, 1900–1940. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill.
Singleton, Theresa A. 1995 The Archaeology of Slavery in North America. Annual Review of Anthropology 24:119–140.
Singleton, Theresa A., and Mark D. Bograd 1995 The Archaeology of the African Diaspora in the Americas. Society for Historical Archaeology, Tucson, AZ.
Sitton, Thad, and James Conrad 2005 Freedom Colonies: Independent Black Texans in the Time of Jim Crow. University of Texas Press, Austin.
Smallwood, James 1981 Time of Hope, Time of Despair. Kennikat Press Corporation, Port Washington, NY.
Smith, Steven D., William H. Adams, and Timothy B. Riordan 1980 The Humanly Touched Thing. In Waverly Plantation: Ethnoarchaeology of a Tenant Farming Community, William Hampton Adams, editor, pp. 263–284. Report to Heritage Farming Conservation and Recreation Service, Atlanta, GA, from Resource Analysts, Bloomington, IN.
Stine, Linda France 1990 Social Inequality and Turn of the Century Farmsteads: Issues of Class, Status, Ethnicity and Race. Historical Archaeology 24(4):37–49.
White, Walter A. III 2017 Writ on the Landscape: Racialization, Whiteness and River Street. In Challenging Theories of Racism, Diaspora, and Agency in African America, William A. White III and Christopher A. Fennell, editors. Thematic issue, Historical Archaeology 51(1):131–148.
Wilkie, Laurie A. 2000 Creating Freedom: Material Culture and African American Identity at Oakley Plantation, Louisiana 1840–1950. Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rouge.
Woodward, C. Vann 1974 The Strange Career of Jim Crow, expanded and revised from 1957, 1966 editions. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
Woofter, Thomas Jackson 1936 Landlord and Tenant on the Cotton Plantation. Works Progress Administration, Division of Social Research, Washington, DC. Reprinted 1969 by Negro Universities Press, Westport, CT.
Acknowledgments:
Thank you to the Texas Department of Transportation and Prewitt & Associates, Inc., for their generous support of the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead Project. I am especially grateful for Doug Boyd, whose support of my research on the Williamses has gone beyond the data-recovery phase of the project. Also, thank you Sandra Hannum for sharing and formatting the figures in this article. Many thanks to Susan Turnquist of Cambridge Editors, as well as Chris Fung, Christopher Matthews, Steve Mrozowski, Paul Mullins, and Jannie Scott for their patience and editorial assistance. They tirelessly worked with me to improve this manuscript. Last, but not least, a special thanks to Maria Franklin; I would not have been able to finish this paper without her guidance and constant encouragement.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The corresponding author states there is no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher’s Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Lee, N.K. Race, Socioeconomic Status, and Land Ownership among Freed African American Farmers: The View from Ceramic Use at the Ransom and Sarah Williams Farmstead, Manchaca, Texas. Hist Arch 54, 404–423 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-020-00239-3
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41636-020-00239-3