Herbert Gutman was a professor of history at the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York. He was researcher
of life of working people and slaves in the USA.
Gutman is considered as a one of the founders and supporter
of “the new labor history”, which believes that
ordinary people don’t receive the proper attention from
He created the critique of the "Commons school"
of the labor history which put the attention only on the markets
and minimizes the importance of the technological progress
and cultural changes in the society.
Gutman is best known for two major works about the slavery
in America: Slavery and the Numbers Game: A Critique of "Time
on the Cross" (1975) and The Black Family in Slavery
and Freedom, 1750–1925 (1976).
He increasingly turned his attention to the black family,
initially in northern cities after the Civil War. This work,
begun in the late 1960s, culminated in his massive “The
Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925”, a book
which despite its hefty seven hundred pages, eliminated masses
of additional material that Gutman had collected in his Buffalo
and Rochester years. Ira Berlin is preparing much of this
material, as well as the previously mentioned Paterson studies,
for publication by Pantheon. (Kealy S.G.,1986)
His famous book “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom,
1750–1925” was brought out a year after the publication
of “Slavery and the Numbers Game”. This book is
the in-depth study of the black family in slave-holding conditions
in the USA. Creating this book the author used census data,
extracts from diaries, family records and other sources, which
argue that the slavery didn’t overpower black family.
Gutman came to a conclusion that the most of black families
kept their unity and friendship in spite of the slavery. He
also noticed that black families didn’t change their
firmness and reliability during the first wave of migration
to the North and the Civil War. But Gutman didn’t deny
that during 1930s and 1940s there was the decline of the black
The heritance of African Americans originated from the African
feeling of collectivism and responsibility to each other.
The West African proverb says "It takes a whole village
to raise a child". This proverb shows us the solidarity
of the black society. Gutman illustrated that black family
was supported by the whole community. This sense of collectivism
inheres in modern black families. The idea of responsibility
was always strong. Nowadays the blood ties can be stronger
that conjugal ties.
In contrast to Moyhihan’s point of view and others like
him Gutman showed that the single buttress for the person,
who lived in the slavery, was his family. Family had the direct
attitude to the developing of the sense of collectivism, which
helped the people to live. Gutman argued that slaves in spite
of their life conditions were able to create their own culture
and social organization.
In his book “The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom,
1750–1925” he examined three main topics about
life of black families: the way of distribution of men and
women duties and rights in their families; the nature of intimate
life both in the family circle and out of it; the nature of
relationships between other members of the family.
? Most of slaves lived in families, which were headed by father
(or mother). A lot of marriages lasted as usual for a long
time (for 30 or more years).
? The father was respected in the family circle, and the new-born
boys were very often named for their fathers.
? Premarital sex was not something forbidden or damnable.
But the society as usual expected the wedding in case of premarital
? Marriages were under the “protection” of the
society family community. This community supported other kinds
of family relationships. Young members of family from their
childhood were taught to respect the older persons. They called
"uncle" and "aunt". The adults called
each other “brother” and “sister”.
Gutman focuses primarily on the family unit and showed that
a unit consisting of man, woman, and child existed in about
two-thirds of the cases of slave unions during the last decades
of slavery on the large plantations in the Southeast. (Robinson,
M. (2006)) These families were supported by owners, who wanted
their slaves gave birth to their children, but owners didn’t
want to give good conditions for babies’ life. Large
planters who had a great number of slaves, considered these
The integrity of the family could be ruined when someone from
the members of the family was sold, raped; concubinage also
could be the reason of the stopping family existence. Gutman
showed difficulties of preservation of the family because
of the irresponsibility of White owner and possibilities of
mothers and children to be sold. According to Gutman, "The
acceptance of a slave norm that placed great emphasis upon
a settled union and the belief that prenuptial pregnancy should
be followed by marriage did not mean, that all slaves behaved
Gutman’s researches proved that in spite of the slavery,
slaves and their progeny kept the fidelity to their community
and kinship and tradition to use kinship as expression of
the most important relationships in the society. "Young
slaves learned about marital and family roles from whites
and free blacks, but they also had the opportunity to learn
from other slaves, a fact confirmed by the nearly twenty thousand
North Carolina ex-slaves…who registered slave marriages".
After the slavery stopped its existing, the traditional ex-slavery
family consisted of poor man, woman, and their children. Adapting
to the new society without slavery system, black families
used two cultural sources: their own, which they created during
the slavery, and the culture of white people. The nuclear
of black family was under the threat of collapse, but it existed
at the time of any conditions. According to Gutman, "Migration
and the changing composition of the Afro-American household
(especially the relative decline of the nuclear household)
among New York City blacks in 1905 were not evidence that
husbands and fathers were less frequently with the family
than in the South in 1880 or 1900".
After the emancipation the black family had dual responsibility:
from the one hand they taught their children to live in new
conditions, not to loose their self-respect, and work a lot.
Besides they taught them to co-exist with white people, their
laws and traditions, how to manage the situation when the
white society was against them. They taught their children
how to struggle and not to loose their own humanity. Till
our days there is this duality in black families. According
to Gutman, "Enslavement was harsh and constricted the
enslaved. But it did not destroy their capacity to adapt and
sustain the vital familial and kin associations and beliefs
that served as the underpinning of a developing African American
Gutman’s contribution to the research of the American
history consists of not only his writings about the life of
labor people, but making this history simple and available
for that people, about whom he wrote. Very often he was criticized
for putting the emphasis on the working people and making
the black people and their families the center of his works.
Nevertheless his researches are necessary and very important
for the study of the history.
The history of the American society is the history of inequality
in different fields: economic, sexual, and racial. But everything
is more complicated. This history is about poor people who
were able to assert their democratic rights, without loosing
1. Bennett L. (1996, February). The roots of Black love. Ebony,
51, 53-58. Gutman, Herbert. The Black Family in Slavery and
Freedom, 1750-1925. New York: Pantheon Books, 1976.
2. Kealy S.G. (1986, May). Herbert G. Gutman, 1928-1985, and
the Writing of Working-Class History. Monthly Review, 38,
3. Robinson, M. (2006). Review of Herbert Gutman's Book The
Black Family in Slavery and Freedom 1750-1925. Retrieved July
8, 2008, from < http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/35936/review_of_herbert_gutmans_book_the.html?page=