Bound in Wedlock is by far one of my favourite reads for this semester. Tera Hunter does a great job at shedding light on the world of Black marriage in the 19th century. From free black to enslaved marriages Hunter does tenacious research and it shows. I love how she lets the readers know it started off as a personal project, stemming from her own family tree. As a historian why not let your audience know that this topic is personal to you. (She talks about how when she traces her family tree back, many of her enslaved family members were raped by their masters or forced into unwanted marriages). Hunter points out that black people were faulted for not conforming to the white norms for marriage, yet many black marriages would have been perceived as civil unions or official marriages if the couple had been white. Exploring how marriage was used to force enslaved people to conform to their masters' will, by marrying unwanted partners or by being separated from those who they did want. Tera Hunter has opened my eyes to another aspect of slavery, showing how deep control goes with enslaved lives. The fabric of African American families being destroyed, even after the American civil war shows how deep the effects of slavery still go.

What stuck out to me with this topic is how black marriage was both recognized and ignored when it was convenient for the white authorities. Historian Michael Tadman writes "To have believed that the black family was really anything like as important as the white family would have meant permanent moral crisis for whites," and while I'm not writing on the historical thought of the black family as a whole it is important to point out that according to slave literature and slave traders maternal feelings for children faded as the children grew older, and familial separation was not as felt by the enslaved family unit.

(I have other thoughts but my notes aren't accessible at the moment.)