"She thought she could find a better market": White Women and the Re-Gendering of the Antebellum Slave Market and Slave-Trading Community

"She thought she could find a better market" explores white southern women's economic roles in antebellum New Orleans slave markets and slave trading communities. It demonstrates that, in spite of formidable social, legal, and economic constraints, single, married and widowed women entered slave markets, attended slave auctions, bought, sold and hired enslaved people, participated in their families' slave trading businesses, and supported the market in slaves by offering their goods and services to New Orleans slave yard operators, traders, brokers, and dealers. Taken together, these women's slave market activities encourage us to reconsider the ways that gender shaped economies and communities woven together by the institution of slavery in the antebellum South.