Kelly Lehtola’s Reviews > They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South > Status Update

Medical schools purchased dead enslaved people’s bodies for research purposes, allowing owners to profit even more after their deaths of their property.

White women’s status as slave owners was wildly respected by southern society, and when it wasn’t, state and federal courts upheld it.

Things I’ve learned so far:
- Southern women were gifted enslaved people, and trained into being owners.
- Marriage settlements in the south acted as modern day prenups for families/women that owned many enslaved people/property, because if they didn’t they immediately became the husbands property after marriage and could be sold to pay off his debt.