Books by Wilma A. (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) Dunaway

This is the first study of 19th-century Appalachian women. Wilma A. Dunaway moves beyond the black-white dichotomy and the preoccupation with affluent females, and argues that the nature of a woman's work was determined by her race, ethnicity, and/or class positions.

Wilma Dunaway contends that studies of the slave family have been flawed by neglect of small plantations and exaggeration of slave agency. Using population trends and slave narratives, she identifies several profit-maximizing strategies that owners implemented to disrupt and endanger African-American families during the Civil War and Reconstruction.

Wilma Dunaway breaks new ground by focusing on slave experiences on small plantations in the Upper South. She draws on a vast array of primary sources to argue that a region was not buffered from the social impacts of enslavement simply because it was characterized by low black population density.