Dianne M. Stewart, "Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage" (Seal Press, 2020)

New Books in African American Studies · Feb 8, 2023 · 1h 4m

According to the 2010 US census, more than seventy percent of Black women in America are unmarried. Black Women, Black Love: America's War on African-American Marriage (Seal Press, 2020) reveals how four centuries of laws, policies, and customs have created that crisis. Dianne Stewart begins in the colonial era, when slave owners denied Blacks the right to marry, divided families, and, in many cases, raped enslaved women and girls. Later, during Reconstruction and the ensuing decades, violence split up couples again as millions embarked on the Great Migration north, where the welfare system…