'Til Death Or Distance Do Us Part

Love and Marriage in African America

Frances Smith Foster

Presents a powerful counterargument to conventional beliefs about African American marriage and family life during the antebellum period
Demonstrates the vitality and value of writings that are often ignored in academic scholarship
Uncovers a trove of little known material produced by African Americas for their own communities from the late 18th century to the Civil War
Draws on extensive archival research, weaving together a nuanced portrait of everyday life from little-known journals, newspapers, historical records, folklore, poetry, and other documents by African Americans to illuminate attitudes toward courtship, sex, and marriage

'Til Death Or Distance Do Us Part

Love and Marriage in African America

Frances Smith Foster

Description

Conventional wisdom tells us that marriage was illegal for African Americans during the antebellum era, and that if people married at all, their vows were tenuous ones: "until death or distance do us part." It is an impression that imbues beliefs about black families to this day. But it's a perception primarily based on documents produced by abolitionists, the state, or other partisans. It doesn't tell the whole story.

Drawing on a trove of less well-known sources including family histories, folk stories, memoirs, sermons, and especially the fascinating writings from the Afro-Protestant Press,'Til Death or Distance Do Us Part offers a radically different perspective on antebellum love and family life.

Frances Smith Foster applies the knowledge she's developed over a lifetime of reading and thinking. Advocating both the potency of skepticism and the importance of story-telling, her book shows the way toward a more genuine, more affirmative understanding of African American romance, both then and now.

'Til Death Or Distance Do Us Part

Love and Marriage in African America

Frances Smith Foster

One: Adam and Eve, Antony and Isabella
Two: Terms of Endearment
Three: Practical Thoughts, Divine Mandates, and the Afro-Protestant Press
Four: Rights and Rituals
Five: Myths, Memory, and Self-Realization
Six: Getting Stories Straight, Keeping Them Real
Seven: Alchemy of Personal Politics
Eight: Me, Mende, and Sankofa: An Epilogue

'Til Death Or Distance Do Us Part

Love and Marriage in African America

Frances Smith Foster

Author Information

Frances Smith Foster, Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Womens Studies, Emory University

Frances Smith Foster is Charles Howard Candler Professor of English and Women's Studies (Emeritus) at Emory University. Her previous books include Written By Herself: Literary Production by African American Women, 1746-1892 (Indiana UP, 1993), Witnessing Slavery: The Development of the Ante-Bellum Slave Narrative (Greenwood, 1979), and several edited collections. Her VSI to African American Literature is forthcoming.

'Til Death Or Distance Do Us Part

Love and Marriage in African America

Frances Smith Foster

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the College Language Association Creative Scholarship Award

"This is a challenging and important text. After deconstructing our national myths about marriage and our specific assumptions about African American marriage, Foster masterfully reconstructs the reality of marriage for enslaved black people. Rather than finding a fragile institution of transient attachments, she uncovers a legacy of love, struggle, and commitment. By choosing whom to love, how to love, and what to sacrifice, black Americans carved out space for their human selves. Their marriages contributed to decades of resistance against the dehumanizing effects of slavery. Although there is not a hint of sentimentalism, this book is truly an inspiring love story." - Melissa Harris-Lacewell, author of Barbershops, Bibles, and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought