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Explores the legacies of slavery in Southern cities along the Gulf and Atlantic coasts
Cities are fraught sites in the national imagination, turned into identity markers when “urban” and “rural” indicate tastes rather than places. Cities bring chaos, draining the lifeblood of the nation like a tick draws blood from its host, to paraphrase Thomas Jefferson’s anti-urban polemics, which might have been written during any election year—centuries or months ago. Racism and anti-urbanism were born conjoined during the Revolution. Like their Atlantic coastal counterparts in the US North, Southern cities —similarly polyglot and cosmopolitan—resist the dominant, mutually inclusive prejudices of the nation that fails to contain them on its eroding, flooding coasts.
Captive City explores the paths of slavery in coastal cities, arguing that captivity haunts the “hospitality” cultures of Charleston, New Orleans, Savannah, and Baltimore. It is not a history of urban slavery, but a literary reflection that argues for coastal cities as a distinct region that scrambles time, resisting the “post” in postindustrial and the “neo” in neoliberalism. Jennie Lightweis-Goff offers a cultural exploration bound by American literature, especially life-writing by the enslaved, as well as compelling reassessments of works by canonical writers such as Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, and Hector St. John de Crevecoeur.
Lightweis-Goff reveals how the preserved yet fragile landscapes of these cities are haunted—not simply by the ghost tours that are signature stops for travelers in their historic districts—but by the echoes of slavery in their economies and built environments.
"This book is valuable not only for those curious about how enslaved individuals viewed urban spaces but also for those exploring the connections between slavery, urban settings, and historical memory…Lightweis-Goff’s important volume offers an intriguing blend of history and ruminations about slavery, its legacies, and the urban environment. Anyone interested in slavery and historical memory will find this book informative, powerful, and thought-provoking."
— Jonathan A. Noyalas
"Urban slavery, especially the experiences of enslaved women in southern cities, is ‘in hiding, and on display,’ as the author states, in this poetic, revelatory book. Instead of focusing on escape or fugitivity, Jennie Lightweis-Goff explores what it meant for Black people in bondage to live, labor, stay put, and move around within and between Baltimore, New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston. The allure and dangers of these sister cities are both historic and ongoing. Captive City makes them legible in surprising, captivating, haunting ways through the voices of the enslaved, the early travel writings of white visitors, and the author’s own vividly described wanderings and observations."
"In Captive City, Jennie Lightweis-Goff shows once again that as an anthropologist of American life she is like no other. As keen a thinker as she is an observer, she has fresh things to say about everything she sees. And she writes like an angel—a profoundly humane angel."