A Labor History of African-American Artisans in Nineteenth-Century South Carolina

FAIN: FT-285957-22

Anne Kerth
University of Massachusetts, Amherst (Amherst, MA 01003-9242)

Writing and revision leading to a history of Black artisans in South Carolina during the nineteenth century.

The funding from this grant would support the writing of my current book manuscript, Property in Skill, a history of the lives and labors of enslaved and free Black artisans in nineteenth-century South Carolina. In this project, I examine the ways in which training and employment in the manual craft trades fundamentally transformed African Americans’ experiences of enslavement, war, emancipation, and the postbellum wage labor economy. Historians have long regarded artisans as key to working-class political consciousness and organization, a line of analysis which has too often excluded or neglected Black practitioners of these trades. My work challenges this oversight, arguing that the radical potentialities of skilled manual labor transcend racial boundaries, particularly in the era of slavery and emancipation. This project thus offers new insight into the complex interconnections of race and class in American labor history.