The Claims of Kinfolk
The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the
Nineteenth-Century South. By Dylan C. Penningroth. (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2003. Introduction, illustrations, figure, conclusion,
notes, bibliography, acknowledgments, index. Pp. x, 310. $19.95, paper; $49.95,
cloth).
Building upon foundations developed by anthropologists and historians of Africa, Dylan C. Penningroth’s The Claims of Kinfolk: African American Property and Community in the Nineteenth-Century South compares nineteenth-century African Americans’ property and kinship experiences with those of formerly enslaved people in the West African city-states of Fante. Examining testimony about property recorded directly from slaves and former slaves, Penningroth’s study conflates yet broadens historiographic interpretations of property, family, and community.
Penningroth argues that, whereas with the ending of slavery in Fante the structure of kinship
permitted former slaves to inherit the property of their former slaveholders’ families, the emancipation of American slaves sparked negotiations and conflicts over the claims of kinfolk, “over how black people were going to relate to each other in the new world of freedom.” While property ownership by enslaved African Americans was not legal, there had thrived an informal economy of ownership and trade among slaves throughout the South. Indeed, slaves had relatively easy access to land, which was not their foremost concern. “Time was.” Slaveholders thus restricted slaves’ access to time more than to land. Yet, by permitting slaves time to accumulate property, slaveholders were able to shift much of the burden of slaves’ subsistence onto slaves themselves, which “helped prop up the white-dominated formal sector while offering little chance of transforming southern society as a whole.” Penningroth thus suggests that, while we are accustomed to thinking of property as a “pillar of freedom,” owning property does not necessarily make a person free.
After the Civil War, of the approximately 5,000 “allowed claims” filed before the Southern Claims Commission by people seeking compensation for property confiscated by Union soldiers who foraged for provisions during the war, nearly 500 came from former slaves. Penningroth cautions readers not to interpret blacks’ claims as only examples of resistance to white domination, for, as he observes, “there is much more to being black than the struggle against white oppression.” Penningroth thus seeks to lift readers’ eyes “from the familiar ground of white-black race relations” to reveal a “whole world of black-black relationships [ . . . ], rather than as mere side effects of their dealings with whites.” So while property ownership did bring “black culture closer to the individualism and nuclear family structure of European Americans,” writes Penningroth, because for most enslaved people in the 1800s it took the help of kinfolk to accumulate property, it added “an unmistakable dynamism into their social ties” that required constant negotiations with “one another over family and community—who belonged and what it meant to belong.”
By taking an African Studies approach, Penningroth brings to the question of nineteenth-century black economy answers that have little to do with Eurocentric Marxist interpretations of cultural struggle which concentrate on the ownership of the means of production; he focuses instead on the organic dynamics of a distinctively diverse social group “subordinated within the groups that define access.” Cultural historians who appreciate interdisciplinary scholarship should find Penningroth’s interpretation of property, kinship, and community an illuminating read.
Reviewed for The North Carolina Historical Review, April 2004, pp. 112-13.
Penningroth argues that, whereas with the ending of slavery in Fante the structure of kinship
permitted former slaves to inherit the property of their former slaveholders’ families, the emancipation of American slaves sparked negotiations and conflicts over the claims of kinfolk, “over how black people were going to relate to each other in the new world of freedom.” While property ownership by enslaved African Americans was not legal, there had thrived an informal economy of ownership and trade among slaves throughout the South. Indeed, slaves had relatively easy access to land, which was not their foremost concern. “Time was.” Slaveholders thus restricted slaves’ access to time more than to land. Yet, by permitting slaves time to accumulate property, slaveholders were able to shift much of the burden of slaves’ subsistence onto slaves themselves, which “helped prop up the white-dominated formal sector while offering little chance of transforming southern society as a whole.” Penningroth thus suggests that, while we are accustomed to thinking of property as a “pillar of freedom,” owning property does not necessarily make a person free.
After the Civil War, of the approximately 5,000 “allowed claims” filed before the Southern Claims Commission by people seeking compensation for property confiscated by Union soldiers who foraged for provisions during the war, nearly 500 came from former slaves. Penningroth cautions readers not to interpret blacks’ claims as only examples of resistance to white domination, for, as he observes, “there is much more to being black than the struggle against white oppression.” Penningroth thus seeks to lift readers’ eyes “from the familiar ground of white-black race relations” to reveal a “whole world of black-black relationships [ . . . ], rather than as mere side effects of their dealings with whites.” So while property ownership did bring “black culture closer to the individualism and nuclear family structure of European Americans,” writes Penningroth, because for most enslaved people in the 1800s it took the help of kinfolk to accumulate property, it added “an unmistakable dynamism into their social ties” that required constant negotiations with “one another over family and community—who belonged and what it meant to belong.”
By taking an African Studies approach, Penningroth brings to the question of nineteenth-century black economy answers that have little to do with Eurocentric Marxist interpretations of cultural struggle which concentrate on the ownership of the means of production; he focuses instead on the organic dynamics of a distinctively diverse social group “subordinated within the groups that define access.” Cultural historians who appreciate interdisciplinary scholarship should find Penningroth’s interpretation of property, kinship, and community an illuminating read.
Reviewed for The North Carolina Historical Review, April 2004, pp. 112-13.