I was part of the team of curators that furnished the Carter's Grove Slave Quarters at Colonial Williamsburg in 1989. One of our goals was to show visitors that enslaved people lived in all kinds of physical and material surroundings--from field workers who may have had very few possessions, to an overseer who had a bed, table, chairs and even a copper stewpan to prepare meals. It was a challenge to explain these contradictions to visitors, who often equate enslavement with few, if any, material goods, when, in fact, enslaved people lived at all levels of the material culture spectrum. But in the most important aspects of their lives, free people had what slaves never did: control over their own lives without fear of punishment or reprisal. I think that would have been worth far more than any material goods or comfort that enslaved people might have had. Martha Katz-Hyman