January is national team month. Writing in 1861, Linda Brent shared that her grandmother often hosted an elaborate tea for the white female benefactor who purchased her freedom. Here grandmother prepared tea along with hot muffins, tea rusks [twice baked bread], and candied fruits or pastry.[1] From everything I have studied elaborately prepared teas and their accompaniments have been gendered events within what some scholars call the cult of domesticity. Women, particularly elite women, used tea parties as safe places to organize antislavery and later women’s suffrage and women’s rights activity. Politically active women have used keys as forums for political candidates seeking to reach I decided voters and raise funds for their campaigns. In short, teas are far more complex than meets the eye.
[1] Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, edited by L. Maria Child (Boston, 1861) in The Classic Slave Narratives, Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), 395, 415.