In South Carolina in 1852, an enslaved Black woman named Rose was faced with imminent separation from her daughter, Ashley, through sale. In a desperate effort to protect her daughter, Rose packed a sack with the following items: a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans, a lock of her own hair, and a promise that the sack would “always” contain her love. The sack’s story then skips ahead to 1921, when Ruth Middleton, Ashley’s granddaughter, embroidered Rose and Ashley’s story onto the sack.

Tiya Miles, the author of All That She Carried, sets out to trace the history of Rose, Ashley, and Ruth. However, she notes that it is often difficult to piece together a full and accurate history, especially when the subjects of one’s research are enslaved Black women. The archival record typically contains little or no information about those who were too marginalized to warrant extensive documentation. However, using the sack as a guide, she intends to tell the story of these women using a blend of archival evidence, contemporary memoirs, slave narratives, and “restrained imagination.”

The search for Rose begins in South Carolina, based on the information provided by Ruth’s embroidery. South Carolina was a major economic and social hub during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and its plantation culture relied almost entirely on slave labor. During her research into slave registries and bills of sale, Miles finds nearly two hundred enslaved Black women named Rose. In an effort to narrow the search, she instead looks for women named Ashley.

This search ultimately leads her to the household of Robert Martin, the only person recorded as having owned a woman named Rose and a woman named Ashley at the same time. Miles notes that it is nearly impossible to be certain of whether these two women are truly the ones mentioned on the sack, but she feels it is nonetheless important to put together a general picture of what life was like for people like Rose and Ashley.

It is likely that Rose and Ashley’s separation occurred after the death of Robert Martin. Typically, when the patriarch of a plantation household died, his wife or children were instructed to liquidate his assets and divide them up. This made the death of an owner a perilous event for enslaved people, who were counted among those assets. Although Ashley was, according to the sack, only nine years old at the time, she was nonetheless sold away from her mother to an unknown future.

When faced with the loss of their children, enslaved mothers often went to extreme lengths to protect them. Some would attempt to make connections with wealthy white men and arrange for them to buy their children, whereas others would attempt daring escapes. In extreme cases, some would even kill their children in an attempt to spare them from the horrors of living in enslavement. Others, like Rose, did what they could to prepare their children for whatever may come.

The contents of Ashley’s sack are, both literally and symbolically, some of the most important elements to maintaining human life. The dress provides protection from the elements, the pecans provide vital nourishment, the hair provides a physical token of remembrance between mother and daughter, and the promise of eternal love provides emotional and spiritual fortification.

Miles notes that the inclusion of a dress in the sack is rife with potential meanings. Clothing was an important means of maintaining class hierarchies in South Carolina society, and enslaved people were relegated to wearing low-quality fabrics called "slave cloths" that could visually distinguish them from free Black people...