This critical reflection will focus the very interesting things that were written about women and their role in that resistance of slavery in “Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves” by Angela Davis and “Hard Labour: Women, Childbirth and Resistance in British Caribbean Slave Societies” by Barbara Bush-Slimani. Both authors focus on the fact that women are never recognized as being apart of slave revolts and sometimes are barely mentioned at all. Although both agree that there was a lot resistance on the women’s part they focus on different ways they expressed that resistance. Angela Davis speaks about visible acts of resistance and how treating black women no different than black men affected their actions. On the …show more content…
As the end of the slave trade seem to become a reality, many slave owners in the Caribbean started to try to even out slave female to male ratios. The reproductive ability of females became needed in order to keep the sugarcane industry alive. Soon enough slave owners were beginning to realize that although they were treating the females better they weren’t getting pregnant. The theory is that many African healers and women brought with them the knowledge of how to have an abortion and used it in fear of the servitude their future children would have to suffer. This was a very important act of resistance because of the power slave women took over their reproductive system. Although they had not control over their sexuality, having a child was something they knowingly decided against, while also hindering the institution of slavery that need their children to live. Overall, both writings were very interesting but I did wish that Davis would have spoken more in-depth about how and when exactly black females gained the Matriarch reputation. I also believed that Bush-Slimani’s assumption was very sound and had information like birth rates, after and before the end of slavery, that supported her ideas,
During the antebellum South, many Africans, who were forced migrants brought to America, were there to work for white-owners of tobacco and cotton plantations, manual labor as America expanded west, and as supplemental support of their owner’s families. Harriet Jacobs’s slave narrative supports the definition of slavery (in the South), discrimination (in the North), sexual gender as being influential to a slave’s role, the significant role of family support, and how the gender differences viewed and responded to life circumstances.
During the times of slavery, black women were forcefully impregnated both in order to maintain the institution of slavery and as an economic incentive for white slave owners to control the reproductive lives of black women. A black woman’s child was considered the property of her slave owner from the moment of conception. This key feature in the institution of slavery gave whites the ultimate power of repression against blacks in America. Despite this fact, black women fought back. They took initiatives such as self-induced miscarriage in order to not bear a child. Unfortunately, these women were punished for taking such initiatives; however, they were reprimanded for the wrong reasons. As Robert demonstrates:
Thesis: Morgan argues that by utilizing the degrading and graphic imagery of black women, slave-owners were able to justify transforming enslaved women from people into property and commodities valued not only for the work labor, but their ability to produce children (7). Through this vision, Morgan explores the lives of enslaved women in colonial America as central to the historical narrative rather than as existing on the margins and how the “underlying realities of reproductive lives shape the encounter with work, community, and culture (1, 3, 194).”
The title of this book comes from the inspiring words spoken by Sojourner Truth at the 1851, nine years prior to the Civil War at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In Deborah Grays White, Ar’n’t I a woman her aim was to enrich the knowledge of antebellum black women and culture to show an unwritten side of history of the American black woman. Being an African- American and being a woman, these are the two principle struggles thrown at the black woman during and after slavery in the United States. Efforts were made by White scholars in 1985 to have a focus on the female slave experience. Deborah Gray White explains her view by categorizing the hardships and interactions between the female slave and the environment in which the
Deborah Gray White’s Ar’n’t I a Woman? details the grueling experiences of the African American female slaves on Southern plantations. White resented the fact that African American women were nearly invisible throughout historical text, because many historians failed to see them as important contributors to America’s social, economic, or political development (3). Despite limited historical sources, she was determined to establish the African American woman as an intricate part of American history, and thus, White first published her novel in 1985. However, the novel has since been revised to include newly revealed sources that have been worked into the novel. Ar’n’t I a Woman? presents African American females’ struggle with race and
It is well known that slavery was a horrible event in the history of the United States. However, what isn't as well known is the actual severity of slavery. The experiences of slave women presented by Angela Davis and the theories of black women presented by Patricia Hill Collins are evident in the life of Harriet Jacobs and show the severity of slavery for black women.
The notion of slavery, as unpleasant as it is, must nonetheless be examined to understand the hardships that were caused in the lives of enslaved African-Americans. Without a doubt, conditions that the slaves lived under could be easily described as intolerable and inhumane. As painful as the slave's treatment by the masters was, it proved to be more unbearable for the women who were enslaved. Why did the women suffer a grimmer fate as slaves? The answer lies in the readings, Harriet Jacob's Incidents in the life of a Slave Girl and Olaudah Equiano's Interesting Narrative which both imply that sexual abuse, jealous mistresses', and loss of children caused the female slaves to endure a more dreadful and hard life in captivity.
In a time period when women were considered inferior, as were blacks, it was unimaginable the horrors a black woman in the south had to endure during this period. African women were slaves and subject to the many horrors that come along with being in bondage, but because they were also women, they were subject to the cruelties of men who look down on women as inferior simply because of their sex. The sexual exploitation of these females often lead to the women fathering children of their white masters. Black women were also prohibited from defending themselves against any type of abuse, including sexual, at the hands of white men. If a slave attempted to defend herself she was often subjected to further beatings from the master. The black female was forced into sexual relationships for the slave master’s pleasure and profit. By doing this it was the slave owner ways of helping his slave population grow.
No one in today’s society can even come close to the heartache, torment, anguish, and complete misery suffered by women in slavery. Many women endured this agony their entire lives, there only joy being there children and families, who were torn away from them and sold, never to be seen or heard from again.
This paper discusses the experiences of African American Women under slavery during the Slave Trade, their exploitation, the secrecy, the variety of tasks and positions of slave women, slave and ex-slave narratives, and significant contributions to history. Also, this paper presents the hardships African American women faced and the challenges they overcame to become equal with men in today’s society. Slavery was a destructive experience for African Americans especially women. Black women suffered doubly during the slave era.
In Elise Johnson McDougald’s essay “The Task of Negro Womanhood,” she elaborates on the difficulties of being a black, working woman in society. In order to understand the struggles of a black woman in America, “one must have in mind not any one Negro woman, but rather a colorful pageant of individuals, each differently endowed” (McDougald, 103). This is because to be able to understand the problems they face as individuals one must think of black women as a collective unit. McDougald focuses on the women living in Harlem because they are more free and have more opportunity to succeed than in the rest of the United States. Though they are considered more
She emphasizes that the life of a slave woman is incomparable to the life of a slave man, in the sense that a woman’s sufferings are not only physical but also extremely mental and emotional. Whether or not a slave woman is beaten, starved to death, or made to work in unbearable circumstances on the fields, she suffers from and endures horrible mental torments. Unlike slave men, these women have to deal with sexual harassment from white men, most often their slave owners, as well as the loss of their children in some cases. Men often dwell on their sufferings of bodily pain and physical endurance as slaves, where as women not only deal with that but also the mental and emotional aspect of it. Men claim that their manhood and masculinity are stripped from them, but women deal with their loss of dignity and morality. Females deal with the emotional agony as mothers who lose their children or have to watch them get beaten, as well as being sexually victimized by white men who may or may not be the father of their children. For these women, their experiences seem unimaginable and are just as difficult as any physical punishment, if not more so.
Beyond economic resistance, black women expressed political opposition to the (racist) Democratic party and were thus seen as worthy of incarceration, at least according to one journalist at the time (18). When they were incarcerated, freedwomen performed resistance by “complaining, being insolent… [as well as] carv[ing] out valued relationships with male prisoners, children, and each other” (19) and/or flirted with men (25). A form of collective contention imprisoned women at Coalburg prison mine executed was refusal to wear their prison uniforms (24). Curtin continues to illustrate the theme of black women’s resistance to oppression by telling the story of Julia Pearson, a woman who shortly after being incarcerated responded to violence with
My paper is an attempt to analyze the entire era of slavery and its later effects upon the lives of Africans who were brought forcefully to America as slaves and even after its abolition were treated inhumanly. My major attempt is to get an in depth insight of the struggles of these people for their survival in such an environment and the predicament of black women who were doubly oppressed; were the victims of both the whites and black men; and treated as naked savages and beasts, with Alice Walker’ masterpiece and Pulitzer prize winning The Color Purple. I have taken this project with my keen interest because the novel touched me deeply and I wanted to analyze it thoroughly.
Slavery has always been the most dreadful phenomena of our world. Slavery, by itself looks so unusual and provokes mixed feelings from the heart of each person. In other words, slavery change a human being into a “thing” or even some type of consumer item. However, a fugitive slave, Frederick Douglass writes the novel called “The Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass” to reveal how the slavery system works. Douglass’ narrative resembles not so much an autobiography as a memoir. If we read this novel closely, women often appear not in a primary plot, but in a short passage and as a vivid images; specifically, an image of abused bodies. Douglass associates women with suffering. Also, he gives an understanding