f elderly African American women who had been slaves. She used their stories, oral histories, biographies, and autobiographies as well as manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1940. In her study she traces the historical development of grandmothers in African American life to reveal commonalities in their experience from the second half of the 19th century until today. Jimenez points out that most grandmothers worked until they died to support their families. They worked in the fields in the rural South, were midwives on the plantations, and were "purveyors of domestic medicine" for both African American and white families (p. 525). Under slavery and during the period afterward, elderly women played active roles in their communities. The respect given to elderly women came from Africa where veneration of the old was a cultural norm.
             During slavery older women were allowed to stop working in the fields and were given the children on the plantation to care for while their mothers worked in the fields. They assumed the role of mother to all the children under their care. After slavery ended, grandmothers continued to care for children. They "fiercely resisted the practice of local authorities binding out orphaned African-American children to their former white owners; they would travel across state lines to rescue their grandchildren from such situations" (Jimenez, 2002, p. 529). Du
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