Women's Experience Under Slavery: Crash Course Black American History #11

Hi, I’m Clint Smith, this is Crash Course
Black American History, and today we’re

talking about Black Women’s experiences
under the early days of American slavery.

Enslavement, as has been made obvious by now,
was inherently cruel to anyone subjected to

it. But it is important for us to note, the
unique ways that men and women experienced

the institution differently because of their
sex.

Women’s experiences under slavery gave them
specific vantage points from which to observe

what was happening around them and also left
them particularly vulnerable to some of the

most horrific parts of the intitution. So
we want to spend a little bit of time talking

about experiences unique to enslaved women
directly.

INTRO
I want to note that there will be mentions

of sexual violence in this episode.
Upon arrival at American ports, African captives

were taken to various trading hubs to be auctioned
off to the highest bidder for plantation labor.

Historian Daina Ramey Berry writes in her
book, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh,

that an enslaved person could be worth anywhere
from $4 - $94,000 (when adjusted to 2014 numbers).

Plantation owners searched for enslaved laborers
to cultivate cash crops, the most lucrative

of them being cotton, sugar, indigo, tobacco,
and rice.

So, when these enslavers came to markets searching
for new laborers, they considered several

factors before making a bid.
Enslavers considered the health and strength

of potential laborers. They considered age,
height, skin color, and the specific skills

an enslaved worker might have had.
But there was another element that shaped

the hierarchy of value to prospective enslavers:
And that’s gender. Gender placed a figurative

price-ceiling on enslaved women’s value,
even though as we’ll see, they were often

expected to do the exact same labor as enslaved
men. The deeply entrenched patriarchy in European

cultures extended across racial lines, and
played a significant role in shaping African

captives' monetary worth.
Even though enslaved women were not sold at

the same high price range as enslaved men,
their value to those who purchased them, was

absolutely clear.
In many regions of the colonies, enslaved

women’s ability to reproduce was hugely
important. Buying a laborer who could bear

children meant that once those children got
older, the enslavers could either exploit

that child’s labor or sell them at a profit.
And as we’ve discussed one of the most consequential

laws that developed around slavery in the
colonial era was Virginia's use of partus

sequitur ventrem, codified by the Virginia
Assembly in 1662, which established the legal

precedent that defined slavery by the mother's
status.

Therefore, regardless of the father's race,
an enslaved black woman's child would automatically

be classified as the property of her enslaver.
Meaning the children had from an enslaved

woman and the white man who may have enslaved
her, would be born into slavery, and owned

by their father.
In their jobs on plantations, enslaved women

sometimes did domestic labor, which consisted
primarily of cooking, cleaning, waiting on

the lady of the house, and caring for the
children of the estate.

New and nursing black mothers would often
be forced to prioritize the care of the white

children of the estate, even at the expense
of their own children. It was not uncommon

for enslaved women to breastfeed white infants
as it was a task white women on the plantations

sometimes preferred not to do.
But while there were many Black women who

engaged in domestic labor, in most cases,
enslavers directed women to work outside the

home, working the land alongside the men and
even their children.

While women’s field labor was comparable
to men’s, they weren’t allowed to take

on some artisanal positions, like carpentry.
Chattel slavery fundamentally disrupted traditional

gender norms within the colonies and in the
emerging United States. Black women were seen

in fundamentally different ways than white
women, and many of the typical notions around

gender roles simply did not apply to them.
Sojourner Truth became one of the earliest

and foremost speakers to address black women's
unique experiences in a racist and sexist

society. Spending a bit of time with her can
be illuminating because she directly experienced,

and spoke about, life as a Black woman in
bondage.

Let’s go to the thought bubble.
Truth was born Isabella Baumfree aka “Bell”

in 1797 in upstate New York.

She was purchased and sold four times and
was made to do brutal physical labor.

Truth, as we’ve mentioned of other enslaved
women before, also attested to having to nurse

white babies in place of her own, as a part
of her expected chores.

She also had to tend to poultry, prepare the
ground for the cultivation of corn, pumpkins,

or buckwheat, and even cut the grass

-- which, at that time, was not as simple
as just sitting on a tractor or pushing a

lawnmower. It involved a scythe and a lot
of upper body strength.

In fact, when enslaver John Dumont offered
to free her, she attempted to increase her

work product as a show of good will.

In the process, she lost her index finger
during a work accident. Which, in a situation

filled with cruel irony, led Dumont not to
keep his promise, claiming that she had become

less productive because of the accident.
After realizing that Dumont would not free

her, Truth decided she was going to free herself.
So, she was just going to walk away. Literally.

She gathered her still nursing child, said
her goodbyes to the rest of her family and

left before dawn eventually fleeing to a local
abolitionist family,

the Van Wagenens, who paid Dumont twenty dollars
to buy Truth’s labor for the remainder of

the year.
She remained with the family until she was

freed when the New York State Emancipation
act went into effect.

She’d later successfully sue for the return
of her six-year-old-son Peter, who was illegally

sold into slavery in Alabama.

Thanks thought bubble.

You may have heard of Sojourner Truth because
of her famous “Ain’t I A Woman” speech.

...the one where she said “I have borne
thirteen children, and seen most all sold

off to slavery, and when I cried out with
my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me!

And ain't I a woman?”
Well, it turns out, she might not have ever

said exactly that! She gave a speech in 1851.
That’s definite. But as historian Nell Painter

explains in her book, Sojourner: A Life, A
Symbol, while this is the version that is

most widely circulated, it is not one grounded
in…well, Truth.

The famous--but inaccurate--version was written
and published 12 years later in 1863, by a

white abolitionist named Frances Dana Barker
Gage. Not only did Gage change or simply make

up some of Sojourner’s words, but she also
put it in a stereotypical 'southern black

slave accent', rather than in Truth’s actual
upper New York State, low-Dutch accent which

sounded very different.
And what’s more, the line Gage originally

published was “ar’n’t I a woman” but
became widely recast as the “ain’t I a

woman” speech in the early 20th century.
It’s a reminder of how, throughout slavery,

the testimonies of Black people were often
filtered through others, who may or may not

have made their own changes along the way.
One of the most horrifying parts of Black

women’s experience in slavery, was the pervasive
sexual violence and harassment they were subjected

to.
Harriet Jacobs provided a detailed account

of the sexual violence that shaped the everyday
lives of black women in her 1861 autobiography

Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl, which
she published under the pseudonym Linda Brent

in order to protect herself.
She writes, “My master met me at every turn,

reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing
by heaven and earth that he would compel me

to submit to him. If I went out for a breath
of fresh air, after a day of unwearied toil,

his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my
mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on

me even there. The light heart which nature
had given me became heavy with sad forebodings.”

The sexual violence that Black women experienced
took on many different forms. There was even

a practice called the Fancy Trade designed
specifically for the sale of mixed race women

for sexual concubinage and prostitution.[1]
In 1937, a formerly enslaved man W. L. Bost

explained some of these dynamics to an interviewer
for the Federal Writers’ Project, a New

Deal era initiative which recorded the oral
testimonies of over 2300 formerly enslaved

people in the late 1930s.
When published, these conversations were often

written with a heavy dialect attributed to
the Black interviewees. Bost said: “Plenty

of the colored women have children by the
white men. She know better than to not do

what he say...they take them very same children
what have they own blood and make slaves out

of them.”
While the use of sexual agency is discussed

by many historians and writers as a viable
form of resistance, it is important that we

not misconstrue it for consent. Writer and
scholar Saidiya Hartman urges us to redefine

rape and sexual assault within the context
of slavery. Women who were legally defined

as property were never in a position to provide
consent when, in so many ways, their bodies

and their choices did not belong to them in
the first place.

Relationships with an enslaver--to the extent
that any such association can be called a

relationship given the power dynamics in place--
could provide some women certain types of

protection and some small privileges that
other enslaved people did not receive.

That could take many forms. It could mean
not having to work in the field. It could

mean having slightly better food for one’s
family. It could also mean keeping one's children

safe from harm or from being sold away. Black
women were presented with a series of impossible

choices, and each decided for themselves how
to navigate it.

Slavery was an oppressive institution and
enslaved life and labor were difficult regardless

of someone’s sex. But it did not affect
black men and women in the same ways, and

it’s important that we be precise about
that.

Their experiences reveal that as critical
as Black women’s labor, and their reproduction,

were to the early American economies, they
were not valued as such--not on the auction

block and certainly not in respect to their
womanhood.

Black women’s particular experiences during
the era of slavery give us insight into the

early iterations of racialized and gendered
oppression that would continue and evolve

in new and insidious ways for centuries to
come. Thanks for watching, I’ll see you

next time.
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________________
[1] Findley, Morgan, An Intimate Economy Enslaved

Women, Work, and America's Domestic Slave
Trade. (North Carolina: University of North

Carolina Press, 2020)