Brewing Beer and Building Authority in the Colonial Gulf Coast

FAIN: FT-286439-22

Jessica Blake
Austin Peay State University (Clarksville, TN 37044-0001)

Research leading to an article on Black female brewers in the lower Mississippi Valley during the eighteenth century.

I investigate the personal and economic histories of Black women in the eighteenth-century lower Mississippi Valley. The article – for which I am applying for funding – looks at how enslaved and free Black women circumvented obstacles in the marketplace, which ranged from bans against their use of knives to regulations forbidding them to sell alcohol. Rather than cave to the restrictions of French and Spanish colonial officials, Black female brewers such as Marton moved their commerce beyond the boundaries of the traditional marketplace. She forged contacts with enslaved rice growers to acquire ingredients, and collaborated with French and free Black men for tools and river travel. Marton thrived due to the economic networks she built across racial lines throughout the broader region.