PositivePasatiempoFinding new primary sources, or in some cases re-evaluating sources (such as the testimony of formerly enslaved people), is Jones-Rogers’ most impressive scholarly strength. She has little patience with what she sees as a long-perceived but incorrect assumption that white women played anything but a central role in slaveholding America, and she makes this point convincingly ... Scholars often overstate or repeat a thesis many times to make their point. This book does exactly that ... They Were Her Property is dense, it’s argumentative, and it skirts the issue of alternative ways for women to fit into a broken, problematic culture. It is least convincing when claiming that white women, from the Civil War era through Reconstruction, downplayed their own direct participation in slavery ... But these problematic elements are outweighed by Jones-Rogers’ use of innovative research to cast light on an area that may forever change how American history is discussed.
