Slavery
A former slave during the antebellum era, Lewis Clarke, said, "How would you like to see your sisters, and your wives, and your daughter, completely, teetotally, and altogether, in the power of the master. - You can picture to yourselves a little, how you would feel; but oh, if I could tell you!" Blacks during the time of slavery saw the many different experiences women had to go through, from "breeding" slaves to working in the fields (Woman and the Family in a slave society, Catherine Clinton, pg.13). Many of times, masters would send for the younger female slaves around the ages of 13 and older. At this time he would then rape her. This was not uncommon to happen. Madison Jefferson, another emancipated slave, said, "Women who refused to submit to the brutal desires of their owners, are repeatedly whipt to subdue their virtuous repugnance, and in most instances this hellish practice is but too successful - when it fails, the women are frequently sold off to the south. Living under a social order which deprived them of virtually all means of gaining personal preferment except the granting of sexual favors, there is little doubt that many slave women submitted willingly to the advances of their masters, some of the family, or, ove
Former slave, Harry McMillan, said that although most were church members, girls were more likely to succumb to sexual temptation than were boys. Blacks were reluctant to discuss such matters, especially with racial and sexual factors inhibiting responses. The relationship between the "mammy" and the children was very strong. Black women gave money to the church, even those who only had a little to give. " White minister also believed that a "godly" family was male-headed and that women are the weaker sex. "Slave breeding was not uncommon on the plantation. Slaves hated when masters' attempt to control mating by matching up couples. Control over who would name the slave was an indicator of the power of the relationship that existed between the owner and the slave. It is easier to trace black women in the community because they are listed on the tithe year to year than it is to do so for white women. Because black woman outnumbered the men, it was easier for women to form families. The bonds of a female slave were two-fold, linking her both to an interracial community of women and setting her apart as a female in a white, patriarchal society. In some cases the anguish and frustration of white women compounded black women's difficulties, resulting in physical and emotional abuse of slave mothers and children. The work patterns of black women fostered the high death rate among their children by exhausting mothers and making infant care difficult.
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Acceptance Essays
