Herbert Gutman’s The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925: An Anthropologist’s View

Extract

With Professor Gutman’s superb work The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 any anthropologist would feel most comfortable, for this is a study of the fine-grain and intimate relationships among a group of people, and such a topic comprises the normal terrain—I am tempted to say the “territorial imperative”— of the anthropologist. But the work is especially appealing to the anthropologist because Gutman has chosen to turn his immense energies on the family. To many people “begits and begats,” terminologies and genealogies are, at best, sterile ways to talk about a group and, at worst, unfortunate reminders of youthful years spent studying the Bible. But to the anthropologist these are technical ideas of the trade, concepts which reveal much about the relationships in a particular society at a particular time. Lastly, and here the anthropologist joins many others, we are all in the debt of Gutman for bringing to light an aspect of the American experience of which most of us were previously unaware. Perhaps the most moving, and paradoxical, aspect of the work is that because it is a testimony to the profound capacity of the black to preserve his essential humanity under the most frightening of conditions, conditions imposed by other humans, it is also an affirmation that all humans make their lives, and their history.