Chapter 3 - “A Well Dressed Woman Named Jenny”

Summary

Chapter 3 examines the ideas of the American Revolution and places fugitive slave women at the center of analysis. The impact of Dunmore’s Proclamation and the Philipsburg Proclamation are examined. From plantations, women escaped to cities and towns, North and South, fleeing poverty and malevolence. After the Philipsburg Proclamation, 40 percent of runaways were women. There were regional variations and similarities. In the South, enslaved women pursued refuge in Spanish Florida and with British troops during the Southern Campaign; in the Chesapeake, enslaved women fled to Pennsylvania and other Northern destinations often seeking refuge with British troops in the process of escaping; in the North and New England, fugitive women sought refuge with the British. In each of these regions, fugitive women also endeavored to pass as free women in urban spaces. Indeed, throughout the Revolutionary Era, enslaved women advanced their liberation through flight. The Revolutionary War bolstered the independence of Black women, gave them increased access to their families with whom they fled, and greater autonomy in their daily lives once they reached safe haven.