Date of Award
2019
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A. in History
Department
Arch Dalrymple III Department of History
First Advisor
Jessica Wilkerson
Second Advisor
Alexandra Lindgren-Gibson
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
This project explores the lives of Caroline Barr and other Black women domestic workers from the 1830s to 1940 in Oxford, MS. The purpose is to challenge prevailing public and scholarly treatments of Caroline Barr that rely on romantic notions and racist perceptions of Black women domestic workers in the Old and New South. Barr is most well-known by scholars and casual readers as author William Faulkner’s “Mammy Callie”. His knowledge and memories of Caroline Barr as his devoted and faithful “mammy” has shaped subsequent academic, literary, and public interest in her. Under this framework, she is left peripheral, silenced, and fragmented. By removing her from William Faulkner’s shadow, this thesis offers a more robust interpretation of Caroline Barr as a historical subject in her own right. Re-contextualizing Barr’s life among Black women illuminates their infinite humanity in the face of racial and gendered social expectations, political subjugation, and anti-Black violence that defined the South. This project challenges the production of knowledge about Caroline Barr and other Black domestic workers in the archive and at Rowan Oak as a former plantation and contemporary public history site.
Recommended Citation
Herron, Kaimara, "She Lived, and Served, and Died: Caroline Barr, Black Domestic Workers, and the Threat of Memory in Lafayette County" (2019). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 1622.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1622