Slavery And The Black Race

1. African women worked indoors doing house chores and cooking. The author describes that the women would rather work outside in the field because they were under constant observations by the Master’s wife. Many African slaves were raped by their masters and as a result they had biracial babies. Many masters sexually abused their slaves in order to have more slaves in their plantation. Due to the unfair abused towards slave women, white mistresses had resentment towards the slave girls and believed the slave girls were the ones seducing their husbands into bed. Some of the biracial children can pass off as white or they were very light skinned so they would be sold at “fancy” auctions for a hefty price, therefore it was common for black families to be separated.

In Celia, a Slave, written by Melton A. McLaurin, the relationships of race, gender, sexuality, power, law, and slavery in the antebellum South is revealed by Celia’s case. In antebellum South, many things dictated a person’s worth, but the race of a person was the number one factor. If a person was of a race other than Caucasian, such as being Black, then he or she would live in the United States as one of two classifications: slave or freed slave. Of these two classifications, both were thought as being subpar humans when compared to white citizens. Due to these beliefs regarding Blacks, slave and free, Blacks themselves were unable to protect themselves from slave masters and in most legal standings (McLaurin 137). This means that Blacks did not have the same citizenship as white people because a slave was not a citizen in the eyes of the law but the human property of his or her master. Gender is the second idea that dictated a person’s worth and character. Males, white particularly, always held more power and sexual control over the women of the antebellum South. White women, when married, became the legal property of her husband (139). Even if a woman was not married, then she was still considered the property of her father and under his protection until she was given away. For example, Virginia Waynescot and Mary Newsome both lived with their father, Robert Newsome (10-11). By living with their father, the two daughters basically handed over their power because Robert

Slavery was common in the eighteenth century. Slaves were seen as property, as they were taken from their native land and forced into long hours of labor. The experience was traumatic for both black men and black women. They were physically and mentally abused by slave owners, dehumanized by the system, and ultimately denied their fundamental rights to a favorable American life. Although African men and women were both subjected to the same enslavement, men and women had different experiences in slavery based on their gender. A male perspective can be seen in, My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. A female perspective is shared in Harriet Jacobs’ narrative titled, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Upon reading both of the viewpoints provided, along with outside research, one can infer that women had it worse.

Slavery and Its Impact on Both Blacks and Whites Slavery and Its Impact on Both Blacks and Whites The institution of slavery was something that encompassed people of all ages, classes, and races during the 1800's. Slavery was an institution that empowered whites and humiliated and weakened blacks in their struggle for freedom. In the book, the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, slave Frederick Douglass gives his account of what it was like being a slave and how he was affected. Additionally, Douglass goes even further and describes in detail the major consequences the institution of slavery had on both blacks and whites during this time period. In the pages to come, I hope to convince you first of the mental/emotional and

Women’s issues during slavery and even into the Reconstruction Era were not held as top priorities within the social structure of life during those times. The main political and social issues were within the male spectrum, and therefore left women’s rights and values in second place, behind men. Within the nineteenth century, there were four specific characteristics that society deemed should be associated with a woman; piety, purity, domesticity, and submissiveness. However, this was not the case when it came to black women. They were not able to exemplify the expected worldview of womanhood due to their circumstances.

Tocqueville anticipated the future these three races. For the Native Americans, Tocqueville anticipated that they were bound to vanish. With a specific end goal to survive, they should be acculturated or begun a fight were one of the two races could vanish. What 's more, Tocqueville anticipated that they will be secluded by the whites. For the Negros, he anticipated the racial blend will extend Negros race everywhere throughout the country. Additionally, they will be more acknowledgeable of their rights and battles will occur between those two races. Moreover, the bondage will be passed from one era to the next residual disgrace and disrespect to the Black race and hate to the white. At long last, Tocqueville proposed that intermix of

Slavery was a cruel and devastating trade that ravished through the world during the Antebellum Era. For both men and women slavery destroyed their entire lives. They both were ripped form their birthplaces and families and forced to endure exhausting physical tasks day in and day out. Along with the taxing physical responsibilities, slaves men and female were deprived of basic human rights and were subject to physical and psychological humiliation. Slaves in the Antebellum South were beaten, starved, and degraded regardless of their sex and were not seen as people but objects to hold and purchase. However, as slavery progressed gender roles became to form clear gender roles and separation of the sexes. The experience of slavery was gender separated through the work the slaves were assigned, the treatment of their masters, and how their gender affected their value and their sale as property.

Because of her expertise in all domestic matters, she was the premier house servant and all others were her subordinates. This, therefore, is the broad outline of Mammy. She was a woman completely dedicated to the white family, especially to the children of that family. She was the house servant who was given complete charge of domestic management. She served also as friend and advisor. She was, in short, a surrogate mistress and mother, giving into the modern day nanny. The Mammy image is fully as misleading as that of Jezebel. Both images have enough instances in reality to lend credibility to stereotypes that would profoundly affect black women. For instance, Black women served in all capacities, from cook to waiting maid, or seamstress. In very wealthy Southern households there were many female servants. Children grew very attached to Mammy, as she was seen as their primary caregiver. Being a Mammy was idyllic for a slave women, for they were given better care and the work wasn’t as tasking. Hard as cleaning, cooking, sewing, dairy work, and child care were, they were not as physically taxing as a sun up to sun down day in the cropbe it sugar, rice, or cotton. On the whole, house women could expect to eat better, dress better, and get better medical care than field women, if only because they were more familiar to the master and mistress, not to mention nearer to the kitchen and potential handmedowns. Still

White women “…owned slaves and managed households in which they held the power of… life and death, and the importance of those facts for southern women’s identity…”( Women’s P.149). Slave owners showed aggression towards their slaves, “some evidence also suggest that slaveholding women who beat their slaves and/or were beaten” ( Women’s P.152). White supremacy played a huge role in slavery. Slaves were passed down to their children if you were white. If you were black and you mom or dad was a slave you were “born into slavery as Isabella in the region north of New York City” ( Women’s P.253). The color of your skin depicted if you were going to have powers like the Anglo’s or be born into slavery, “It also ensured that children born to a free father and an enslaved mother followed the condition of the mother into slavery, not only binding enslaved men and women…”( Women’s

The next major topic of discussion in the novel is the nature of female slavery, in which White highlights the labor performed by female slaves and the masters’ expectations for childbearing. She describes how African American women were expected to perform duties of labor “with the strength of any man,” while also

In 1619, when slavery first began it was clear early on that it wouldn’t be a positive experience for its victims. The victims, typically people of African American decent, were not afforded any rights as human beings. They were excluded from the political system (not allowed to hold offices or vote); they were excluded from holding jobs of quality and forced to be slaves. Even as slaves they were denied many of the basic needs that were plentiful for many of America’s Caucasian citizens. African Americans as a whole had a limited amount of options during that time but the African American female slave carried not only the burden of being black but also being a female. Many of the experiences that black females had during this time differed a small bit from what their male counterparts might have experienced. I’ll explore the life of the black woman during slavery and her fight to have a normal life.

Slave women were forced to comply with the sexual orders given, if they resisted, consequences were in forms of physical beatings. Violence was a willful effort in keeping African women in a state of hopelessness, depriving them of any feelings of control. The women had no choice but to obey, and after generations there were numerous “mulatto” offspring. At times, women slaves hoped that having sexual activity would increase the chances of having their children be liberated by the slave holder, but at the end, many mulatto kids were forced into slavery. The mulatto child symbolizes domination and vulnerability due to the fact that the white man and the black woman both held a meaning through their color of skin. The white man reflects domination for the reason that he has violently beaten slaves’ hence building fear in them, resulting in slaves to perform hard labor for they feared for their lives. As the color white symbolize pureness, slaveholder did not view objectification as a bad thing, on the contrary, they thought they were doing a good. White men mainly viewed African women as sexual objects that can be used whenever they felt like it, resulting in black women feeling meaningless for they felt ‘dirty’ in the eyes of

Black people started to express their freedoms by making their own churches and schools and trying to advocate for more civil rights. Black people were finally out of the oppression of slavery and while some of them might have not known what to do with themselves most of them were excited that could finally do stuff like other Americans. White people started to mourn the loss of their beliefs and started to violently opposing the new America that was forming during reconstruction. It was rough for the bigoted white Southerners to see a change they did not like because they had held the position that blacks were inferior for all of their life and now all of the sudden that has changed on them by law it was rough for them to see the

Slavery defined white women’s place in society and gave them the belief that it could lead to social hierarchy for them. Affluent white southern women, or southern mistresses, supported the institution of slavery because of the idea that slave ownership provided meant you were a part of the elite of the South. Southern plantation mistresses were the epitome of the ultimate housewives because they were free of the manual labor associated with their domestic duties and were able to enjoy leisure time to focus on their children and husbands. However, this picture perfect image was not the reality of the Southern plantation mistress.

Minrose Gwin‘s book, Black and White Women of the Old South, argues that history has problems with objectiveness. Her book brings to life interesting interpretations on the view of the women of the old south and chattel slavery in historical American fiction and autobiography. Gwin’s main arguments discussed how the white women of the south in no way wanted to display any kind of compassion for a fellow woman of African descent. Gwin described the "sisterhood" between black and white women as a "violent connection"(pg 4). Not only that, Gwin’s book discusses the idea that for most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, a black woman usually got subjected to displacement of sexual and mental