| This dissertation examines the rhetorical purpose of letters written by African Americanwomen in the United States protesting the system of slavery, understood broadly, through the Jim Crow Era. By writing letters, all of which contain both information and narrative, these women broadened the movement for social justice available to women, particularly women of color. This dissertation evaluates the use of the epistolary genre, and includes diaries, newspaper articles, or other story modes that utilize letters to tell the story.This dissertation explores actual historical letters, published and recognized by literaryscholars, but also includes some located in the National Archives. These letters, heretoforeunstudied and unexamined, served very specific purposes: to protest against, and to plead for help, for re-enslaved Black men in the rural south, caught in a system which author Douglas A. Blackmon, has termed “neo-slavery,” otherwise known as convict leasing or penal servitude. This study also includes letters from women who were also taken into servitude, appealing for clemency by writing from inside the system. These letters represent acts of defiance and protest,and were smuggled out to alert others of the horrific physical and mental abuse, including rape, which they routinely experienced. To set the context for the protest letters that emerged from the convict leasing system, this study begins with pre-Civil War writings of figures like HarrietJacobs and Phillis Wheatley. The concluding discussion explores current debates on teaching race and how individual narratives intersect with the historical moment in which we now teach.Keywords: Letter writing—social practice, literacy, American letters, African Americanliterature, African American Women—slavery, reconstruction, civil rights, social conditions, power—race relations, convict leasing, family separation—letter writing as protest. |