autonomy – an individual’s ability to have control over their mind, body, and freedom to make decisions and move around on their own.

“Living scattered throughout the countryside on the largest farms and working in the house as often as in the field, blacks enjoyed neither the mobility nor the autonomy of slaves employed i the provisioning trade.” (Ira Berlin, “Time, Space and the Evolution of Afro-American Society on Mainland British North America.” The American Historical Review, Vol. 85, No. 1, Feb. 1980, p 47.)

• Critical term when discussing social stratification, especially slavery.
• Difficult to tell just how much “autonomy” the enslaved actually felt when the laws and social norms, and physical realities of their conditions were entirely based on limiting their freedom and keeping it subject to white preferences on a nearly universal basis within the colonies.
• Berlin does a good job making this an ongoing focus of his research and analysis, highlighting even the smallest examples of black self determination and the ways in which the enslaved made the most of their conditions that allowed for equality through separation or integration.

Janelle Poe

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