Enslaved Women, Part 1: Matilda Lewis Threlkeld
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Earlier this season, we learned about the Sisters of Charity of Nazareth, founded in part by Mary Catherine Spalding – and touched upon their dark history of slavery and the recent efforts to research and acknowledge that history. The Sisters’ actions are just one of many efforts to research, recognize, commemorate, and commit to reparative justice for Blacks in the United States – and Kentucky. Many of these efforts unfortunately focus on group stories – piecing together the narratives of individual enslaved persons is difficult for many reasons. Because enslaved persons were treated as property, many were illiterate – their stories hence being told only through oral traditions – while even those who were literate saw little opportunity to publish or preserve their writings. American history holds up the few published slave narratives, but what about stories from Kentucky’s history?
Two enslaved women’s stories are known to us: Matilda Lewis Threlkeld and Margaret “Peggy” Garner. Today, we’ll be looking at Matilda’s story, which reveals the daily lives of enslaved women in Kentucky.
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