Such kinship was labeled broken and immoral, and the home environment deemed unhealthy and a danger to society. Women assumed the duties of men, and men were dependent on the wages of their sisters, mothers, and wives to support families.
… taking on dependents and assuming obligations that others had abandoned or were unable to meet, yet such practices enabled survival. Flexible and elastic kinship were not a “plantation holdover,” but a resource of black survival, a practice that documented the generosity and mutuality of the poor. Saidiya Hartman
