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Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience

In a retrospective examination of the black female slave experience, sexism looms as large as racism as an oppressive force in the lives of black women. Institutionalized sexism— that is, patriarchy—formed the base of the American social structure along with racial imperialism. Sexism was an integral p art of the social and political order white colonizers brought with them from their European homelands, and it was to have a grave impact on the fate of enslaved black women. In its earliest stages, the slave trade focused primarily on the importation of laborers; the emphasis at that time was on the black male. The black female slave was not as valued as the black male slave. On the average, it cost more money to buy a male slave than a female slave. The scarcity of workers coupled with the rela­ tively few numbers of black women in American colonies caused some white male planters to encourage, persuade, and coerce im m igrant white females to engage in sexual relation­ ships with black male slaves as a means of producing new workers. In Maryland, in the year 1664, the first anti-amalgama­ tion law was passed; it was aimed at curtailing sexual relation­ ships between white women and enslaved black men. One part

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o f the preamble of this document stated:

That whatsoever freeborn woman shall intermarry with any slave, from and after the last day of the present assembly, shall serve the masters of such slaves during the life of her husband; and that all the issue of such free born women, so married shall be slaves as their fathers were.

T he most celebrated case of this time was that of Irish N ell, an indentured servant sold by Lord Baltimore to a south­ ern planter who encouraged her to marry a black man named Butler. Lord Baltimore, on hearing of the fate of Irish N ell, was so appalled that white women were either by choice or coercion co-habiting sexually with black male slaves that he had the law repealed. The new law stated that the offspring of relationships between white women and black men would be free. As efforts on the part o f outraged white men to curtail inter-racial rela­ tionships between black men and white women succeeded, the black female slave acquired a new status. Planters recognized the economic gain they could amass by breeding black slave women. The virulent attacks on slave importation also led to more emphasis on slave breeding. Unlike the offspring of relationships between black men and white women, the off­ spring of any black slave woman regardless of the race of her mate would be legally slaves, and therefore the property of the owner to whom the female slave belonged. As the market value of the black female slave increased, larger numbers were stolen or purchased by white slave traders.

W hite male observers of African culture in the 18th and 19th centuries were astounded and impressed by the African male’s subjugation o f the African female. They were not accus­ tomed to a patriarchal social order that demanded not only that w om en accept an inferior status, but that they participate actively in the community labor force. Amanda Berry Smith, a 19th century black missionary, visited African communities and reported on the condition of African women:

The poor women of Africa, like those of India, have a hard time. As a rule, they have all the hard work to do. They have to cut and carry all the wood, carry all the water on their heads, and plant all the rice. The men and boys cut and burn

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the bush, with the help of the women; but sowing the rice, and planting the cassava, the women have to do.

You will often see a great, big man walking ahead with nothing in his hand but a cutlass (as they always carry that or a spear), and a woman, his wife, coming on behind with a great big child on her back, and a load on her head.

No matter how tired she is, her lord would not think of bringing her a jar of water, to cook his supper with, or of beating the rice, no, she must do that.

The African woman schooled in the art of obedience to a higher authority by the tradition of her society was probably seen by the white male slaver as an ideal subject for slavery. As much of the work to be done in the American colonies was in the area of hoe-agriculture, it undoubtedly occurred to slavers that the African female, accustomed to performing arduous work in the fields while also performing a wide variety o f tasks in the domestic household, would be very useful on the American plantation. W hile only a few African women were aboard the first ships bringing slaves to the new world, as the slave trade gathered momentum, females made up one-third of the human cargo aboard most ships. Because they could not effectively resist capture at the hands of thieves and kidnappers, African women became frequent targets for white male slavers. Slavers also used the capture of women important to the tribe, like the daughter of a king, as a means o f luring African men into situations where they could be easily captured. Other African women were sold into slavery as punishment for breaking tribal laws. A woman found guilty of committing an act of adultery might be sold into bondage.

W hite male slavers did not regard the African female as a threat, so often aboard slave ships black women were stored without being shackled while black men were chained to one another. The slavers believed their own safety to be threatened by enslaved African men, but they had no such fear of the African female. The placing of African men in chains was to prevent possible uprisings. As white slavers feared resistance and retaliation at the hands of African men, they placed as much distance between themselves and black male slaves as was possible on board. It was only in relationship to the black

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female slave that the white slaver could exercise freely absolute power, for he could brutalize and exploit her without fear of harmful retaliation. Black female slaves moving freely about the decks were a ready target for any white male who might choose to physically abuse and torment them. Initially every slave on board the ship was branded with a hot iron. A cat-o’- nine-tails was used by the slavers to lash those Africans that cried out in pain or resisted the torture. Women were lashed severely for crying. They were stripped of their clothing and beaten on all parts of their body. Ruth and Jacob Weldon, an African couple who experienced the horrors of the slave pas­ sage, saw "mothers with babes at their breasts basely branded and scarred, till it would seem as if the very heavens might smite the infernal tormentors with the doom they so richly merited.” After the branding all slaves were stripped of any clothing. The nakedness of the African female served as a constant reminder of her sexual vulnerability. Rape was a common method of torture slavers used to subdue recalcitrant black women. The threat of rape or other physical brutalization inspired terror in the psyches of displaced African females. Robert Shufeldt, an observer of the slave trade, documented the prevalence of rape on slave ships. He asserts, "In those days many a negress was landed upon our shored already impreg­ nated by someone of the demonic crew that brought her over.”

Many African women were pregnant prior to their capture or purchase. They were forced to endure pregnancy without any care given to their diet, without any exercise, and without any assistance during the labor. In their own communities African women had been accustomed to much pampering and care during pregnancy, so the barbaric nature of childbearing on the slave ship was both physically harmful and psychologically demoralizing. Annals of history record that the American slave ship Pongas carried 250 women, many of them pregnant, who were squeezed into a compartment of 16 by 18 feet. The women who survived the initial stages of pregnancy gave birth aboard ship with their bodies exposed to either the scorching sun or the freezing cold. The numbers of black women who died during childbirth or the number of stillborn children will never

be known. Black women with children on board the slave ships were ridiculed, mocked, and treated contemptuously by the slaver crew. Often the slavers brutalized children to watch the anguish of their mothers. In their personal account of life aboard a slave ship, the Weldons recounted an incident in which a child of nine months was flogged continuously for refusing to eat. When beating failed to force the child to eat, the captain ordered that the child be placed feet first into a pot of boiling water. After trying other torturous methods with no success, the captain dropped the child and caused its death. N o t deriving enough satisfaction from this sadistic act, he then commanded the mother to throw the body of the child over­ board. The mother refused but was beaten until she submitted.

The traumatic experiences of African women and men aboard slave ships were only the initial stages of an indoctrina­ tion process that would transform the African free human being into a slave. An important part of the slaver’s job was to effectively transform the African personality aboard the ships so that it would be marketable as a "docile” slave in the American colonies. The prideful, arrogant, and independent spirit of the African people had to be broken so that they would conform to the white colonizer’s notion of proper slave demean­ or. Crucial in the preparation of African people for the slave market was the destruction of human dignity, the removal of names and status, the dispersement of groups so that there would exist no common language, and the removal of any overt sign of an African heritage. The methods the slaver used to de-humanize African women and men were various tortures and punishments. A slave might be severely beaten for singing a sad song. When he deemed it necessary, the slaver would slaughter a slave so as to inspire terror in the enslaved on­ lookers. These methods of terrorization succeeded in forcing African people to repress their awareness of themselves as free people and to adopt the slave identity imposed upon them. Slavers recorded in their log-books that they were sadistically cruel to Africans aboard the slave ships as a way of "breaking them in” or "taming” them. African females received the brunt of this mass brutalization and terrorization not only because they could be victimized via their sexuality but also because they

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were more likely to work intimately with the white family than the black male. Since the slaver regarded the black woman as a marketable cook, wet nurse, housekeeper, it was crucial that she be so thoroughly terrorized that she would submit passively to the will of white master, mistress, and their children. In order to make his product saleable, the slaver had to ensure that no recalcitrant black female servant would poison a family, kill children, set fire to the house, or resist in any way. The only insurance he could provide was based on his ability to tame the slave. Undoubtedly, the slave ship experience had a tremendous psychological impact on the psyches of black women and men. So horrific was the passage from Africa to America that only those women and men who could maintain a will to live despite their oppressive conditions survived. W hite people who ob­ served the African slaves as they departed from the ships on American shores noted that they seemed to be happy and joyful. They thought that the happiness of the African slaves was due to their pleasure at having arrived in a Christian land. But the slaves were only expressing relief. They believed no fate that awaited them in the American colonies could be as horrific as the slave ship experience.

Traditionally, scholars have emphasized the impact of slavery on the black male consciousness, arguing that black men, more so than black women, were the "real” victims of slavery. Sexist historians and sociologists have provided the American public with a perspective on slavery in which the m ost cruel and de-humanizing impact o f slavery on the lives of black people was that black men were stripped of their mascu­ linity, which they then argue resulted in the dissolution and overall disruption o f any black familial structure. Scholars have argued further that by not allowing black men to assume their traditional patriarchal status, white men effectively emascu­ lated them, reducing them to an effeminate state. Implicit in this assertion is the assumption that the worst that can happen to a man is that he be made to assume the social status of woman. To suggest that black men were de-humanized solely as a result o f not being able to be patriarchs implies that the subjugation o f black women was essential to the black male’s

development of a positive self-concept, an idea that only served to support a sexist social order. Enslaved black men were stripped of the patriarchal status that had characterized their social situation in Africa but they were not stripped of their masculinity. Despite all popular arguments that claim black men were figuratively castrated, throughout the history o f slavery in America black men were allowed to maintain some semblance of their societally defined masculine role. In colonial times as in contemporary times, masculinity denoted posses­ sing the attributes of strength, virility, vigor, and physical prowess. It was precisely the "masculinity” of the African male that the white slaver sought to exploit. Young, strong, healthy African males were his prime target. For it was by the sale of virile African men "would-be workers” that the white slave trader expected to receive maximum profit return on his invest­ ment. That white people recognized the "masculinity” of the black male is evident by the tasks assigned the majority of black male slaves. N o annals of history record that masses of black slave men were forced to execute roles traditionally performed exclusively by women. Evidence to the contrary exists, docu­ menting the fact that there were many tasks enslaved African men would not perform because they regarded them as "female” work. If white women and men had really been obsessed by the idea of destroying black masculinity, they could have physically castrated all black men aboard slave ships or they could easily have forced black men to assume "feminine” attire or perform so-called "feminine” tasks. W hite slave­ holders were ambivalent in regards to their treatment of the black male, for while they exploited his masculinity, they institu­ tionalized measures to keep that masculinity in check. Indivi­ dual black men were castrated by their owners or by mobs but the purpose of such acts was usually to set an example for other male slaves so that they would not resist white authority. Even if enslaved black men had been able to maintain completely their patriarchal status in relationship to enslaved black women, it would not have made the reality o f slave life any less tolerable, any less brutal, or any less de-humanizing.

Oppression o f black men during slavery has been de­ scribed as a de-masculinization for the same reason that vir­

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tually no scholarly attention has been given to the oppression of black women during slavery. Underlying both tendencies is the sexist assumption that the experiences of men are more important than those of women and that what matters most among the experiences of men is their ability to assert them­ selves patriarchally. Scholars have been reluctant to discuss the oppression of black women during slavery because of an un­ willingness to seriously examine the impact of sexist and racist oppression on their social status. Unfortunately this lack of interest and concern leads them to deliberately minimize the black female slave experience. Although it in no way dim­ inishes the suffering and oppressions of enslaved black men, it is obvious that the two forces, sexism and racism, intensified and magnified the sufferings and oppressions of black women. The area that most clearly reveals the differentiation between the status of male slaves and female slaves is the work area. The black male slave was primarily exploited as a laborer in the fields; the black female was exploited as a laborer in the fields, a worker in the domestic household, a breeder, and as an object of white male sexual assault.

While black men were not forced to assume a role colonial American society regarded as "feminine,” black women were forced to assume a "masculine” role. Black women labored in the fields alongside black men, but few if any black men labored as domestics alongside black women in the white household (with the possible exception of butlers, whose status was still higher than that of a maid). Thus, it would be much more accurate for scholars to examine the dynamics of sexist and racist oppression during slavery in light of the masculinization of the black female and not the de-masculinization of the black male. In colonial American society, privileged white women rarely worked in the fields. Occasionally, white female in­ dentured servants were forced to work in the fields as punishment for misdeeds, but this was not a common practice. In the eyes of colonial white Americans, only debased and degraded members of the female sex labored in the fields. And any white woman forced by circumstances to work in the fields was regarded as unworthy of the title "woman.” Although

enslaved African women had labored in the fields in African communities, there these tasks were seen as an extension of a woman’s feminine role. Transplanted African women soon realized that they were seen as "surrogate” men by white male slavers.

On any plantation with a substantial number of female slaves, black women performed the same tasks as black men; they plowed, planted, and harvested crops. On some planta­ tions black women worked longer hours in the fields than black men. Even though it was a widespread belief among white plantation owners that black women were often better workers than their male counterparts, only a male slave could rise to the position of driver or overseer. Given their African heritage, it was easy for enslaved black women to adapt to farm labor in the colonies. N o t only was the displaced African man unaccus­ tomed to various types of farm labor, he often saw many tasks as "feminine” and resented having to perform them. In the states where cotton was the main staple to market, harvesting of crops depended heavily on the labor of black females. Although both black women and men labored to pick the ripe cotton, it was believed that the more delicately tapered fingers of the black female made it easier for her to gather the cotton from the pod. White overseers expected black female workers to work as well if not better than their male counterparts. If a black female worker failed to accomplish the amount of work expected of her, she was punished. White men may have discriminated against black women slaves in choosing to allow only males to be drivers or overseers, but they did not discrimi­ nate in the area of punishment. Female slaves were beaten as harshly as male slaves. Observers of the slave experience claim that it was common on a plantation to see a black female stripped naked, tied to a stake, and whipped with a hard saw or club.

On large plantations not all black women labored in the fields. They worked as nurses, cooks, seamstresses, washer­ women, and as maids. The popular notion that black slaves working in the white household were automatically the recipi­ ents of preferential treatment is not always substantiated by the personal accounts of slaves. House slaves were less subjected to

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the physical hardships that beset field workers, but they were more likely to suffer endless cruelty and torture because they were constantly in the presence of demanding mistresses and masters. Black females working in close contact with white mistresses were frequently abused for petty offenses. Mungo White, an ex-slave from Alabama, recalled the conditions under which his mother worked:

Her task was too hard for any one person. She had to serve as maid to Mr. White’s daughter, cook for all de hands, spin and card four cuts of thread a day, and den wash. Dere was one hundred and forty-four threads to de cut. If she didn’t get all dis done she got fifty lashes dat night.

House slaves complained repeatedly about the stress and strain o f being constantly under the surveillance of white owners.

Racist exploitation of black women as workers either in the fields or domestic household was not as de-humanizing and demoralizing as the sexual exploitation. The sexism of colonial white male patriarchs spared black male slaves the humiliation of homosexual rape and other forms of sexual assault. W hile institutionalized sexism was a social system that protected black male sexuality, it (socially) legitimized sexual exploita­ tion of black females. The female slave lived in constant aware­ ness of her sexual vulnerability and in perpetual fear that any male, white or black, might single her out to assault and victim­ ize. Linda Brent in the narrative of her slave experience expressed her awareness of the black female’s plight:

Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women. Superadded to the burden common to all, they have wrongs, and suffering, and mortifications peculiarly their own.

Those sufferings peculiar to black women were directly related to their sexuality and involved rape and other forms of sexual assault. Black female slaves were usually sexually assaulted when they were between the ages of thirteen and sixteen. One female slave autobiographer declared:

The slave girl is reared in an atmosphere of licentiousness and fear. The lash and the foul talk of her masters and his sons are her teachers. When she is fourteen or fifteen, her

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owner or his sons, or the overseer, or perhaps all of them, begin to bribe her with presents. If these failed to accomplish their purpose, she is whipped or starved into submission to their will.

Black female slave narratives that provide information con­ cerning the sexual education of girls suggest that they knew little about their bodies, where babies came from, or about sexual intercourse. Few slave parents warned their daughters about the possibility of rape or helped them to prepare for such situations. The slave parents’ unwillingness to openly concern themselves with the reality of sexual exploitation reflects the general colonial American attitude regarding sexuality.

Sexual exploitation of young slave girls usually occurred after they left the hut or cabin of their parents to work in the white domestic household. It was a common practice for a young slave girl to be forced to sleep in the same bedroom with a master and mistress, a situation which provided a convenient setting for sexual assault. Linda Brent recorded in her auto­ biography a detailed account of her white master’s obsessive desire to assert his power over her by constantly threatening rape. W hen Linda first entered the service of her owner Dr. Flint, she was thirteen years old. H e did not rape her but began to constantly torment and persecute her by verbally announcing his intentions to take her sexually. At the onset of their encoun­ ter he informed her that if she would not willingly submit, he would use force. Describing herself at fifteen, Linda wrote:

I was compelled to live under the same roof with him— where I saw a man forty years my senior daily violating the most sacred commandment of nature. He told me I was his property; that I must be subjected to his will in all things...

W hite male slaveowners usually tried to bribe black w om en as preparation for sexual overtures so as to place them in the role o f prostitute. As long as the white slaveowner "paid” for the sexual services o f his black female slave, he felt absolved of responsibility for such acts. Given the harsh conditions of slave life, any suggestion that enslaved black women had a choice as to their sexual partner is ludicrous. Since the white male could rape the black female who did not willingly respond to his

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demands, passive submission on the part of the enslaved black women cannot be seen as complicity. Those women who did not willingly respond to the sexual overture of masters and overseers were brutalized and punished. Any show of resistance on the part of enslaved females increased the determination of white owners eager to demonstrate their power. In an account of her slave experience, Ann, a young mulatto woman, documents the struggle for power enacted by white masters, overseers, whippers, and the female slave. In her case it was the paid whipper who planned to rape her. He demanded that she remove all her clothing prior to the whipping. When Ann realized that he intended to rape her, she struggled. Her resistence angered him and he responded, "Girl, you’ve got to yield to me. I’ll have you now; if it’s only to show you that I can...You’ve got to be mine. I’ll give you a fine calico dress and a pretty pair of ear-bobs!” Ann tells readers:

This was too much for further endurance. What! Must I give up the angel sealed honor of my life in traffic for trinkets. Where is the woman that would not have hotly resented such an insult. I turned upon him like a hungry lioness, and just as his wanton hand was about to be laid upon me, I dexterously aimed, and hurled the bottle against his left temple. With a low cry of pain he fell to the floor, and the blood oozed freely from the wound.

The paid whipper did not die from Ann’s attack, so she was only punished by a prison sentence and daily floggings. Had he died she would have been tried for murder and sentenced to death.

Nineteenth century white female humanist Lydia Marie Child accurately summed up the social status of black women during slavery with the statement:

The negro woman is unprotected either by law or public opinion. She is the property of her master, and her daughters are his property. They are allowed to have no conscientious scruples, no sense of shame, no regard for the feelings of husband, or parent: they must be entirely subservient to the will of their owner on pain of being whipped as near unto death as will comport with his interest or quite to death if it suits his pleasure.

W hite male slaveowners wanted enslaved black women to passively accept sexual exploitation as the right and privilege of those in power. The black female slave who willingly submitted to a master’s sexual advance and who received presents of payments was rewarded for her acceptance of the existing social order. Those black women who resisted sexual exploita­ tion directly challenged the system; their refusal to submit passively to rape was a denouncement of the slaveowner’s right to their persons. They were brutally punished. The political aim of this categorical rape of black women by white males was to obtain absolute allegiance and obedience to the white imper­ ialistic order. Black activist Angela Davis has convincingly argued that the rape of black female slaves was not, as other scholars have suggested, a case of white men satisfying their sexual lust, but was in fact an institutionalized method of terrorism which had as its goal the demoralization and de­ humanization of black women. Davis contends:

In confronting the black woman as adversary in a sexual contest, the master would be subjecting her to the most elemental form of terrorism distinctly suited for the female: rape. Given the already terroristic texture of plan­ tation life, it would be as potential victim of rape that the slave woman would be most unguarded. Further, she might be most conveniently manipulated if the master contrived a random system of sorts, forcing her to pay with her body for foods, diminished severity of treatment, the safety of her children, etc.

In 1839, the book A merican Slavery: A s It Is was published anonymously by white abolitionists who believed they could destroy the pro-slavery arguments by exposing in print the horrors of slave life. They relied on the accounts of white people who had observed slavery firsthand or had gained infor­ mation from slaveholders and their friends. The work was compiled and collated primarily by Angelina and Sarah Grimke, two outspoken abolitionists. Because their brother had fathered children by a black female slave, they were particularly con­ cerned about the sexual exploitation of black female slaves. For many other white female abolitionists the sole motivating force behind their anti-slavery efforts was the desire to bring an end

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to sexual contact between white men and black female slaves. They were not concerned about the plight of enslaved black women, but about saving the souls of white men whom they believed had sinned against God by their acts of moral deprav­ ity. Many pro-slavery white women ultimately denounced slavery because of their outrage at the sexual barbarity of white men. They felt personally shamed and humiliated by what they termed white male adultery (which was in actuality rape). Commenting on her mistress’ attitude toward the sexual exploitation of black women, Linda Brent wrote:

I was soon convinced that her emotions arose from anger and wounded pride. She felt that her marriage vows were desecrated, her dignity insulted; but she had no compassion for the poor victim of her husband’s perfidy. She pitied herself as a martyr; but she was incapable of feeling for the condition of shame and misery in which her unfortunate, helpless slaves were placed.

The Grimke women sympathized with the plight of black females but Victorian social convention governing behavior did not allow them to graphically expose many of the cruel acts inflicted upon black slave women by white men. Proper decorum prevented them from speaking directly and honestly about the hidden evils of slavery. Angelina Grimke wrote:

We forbear to lift the veil of private life any higher. Let these few hints suffice to give you some idea of what is daily passing behind the curtain which has been so carefully drawn before the scenes of domestic life in slave holding America.

Had Angelina and Sarah Grimke lifted the veil of private life any higher they would have exposed not only slaveowners siring children by black women, but sadistic misogynist acts of cruelty and brutality that went far beyond seduction— to rape, to torture, and even to orgiastic murder and necrophilia.

Modern historians tend to make light of the sexual exploi­ tation o f black w om en during slavery. In his Daughters o f th e Prom ised Land Page Smith writes:

Most young Southern men doubtless had their initial sexual experience with a compliant slave girl. It was not

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unnatural that many of them should continue to indulge themselves after their marriages. In addition there was undoubtedly the attraction of the perverse, of the taboo, the association of darkness with pleasant wickedness, the absence of any danger to the sexual exploiter however unwelcome his attentions may have been. Moreover, there was the tradition of Negro sensuality which may well have worked to make the white wife a more restrained sexual partner. Thus when the Southern male looked to slave women for his basic sexual satisfaction, he increasingly found them there. Since there seems to be in masculine sexuality a measure of aggressiveness and even sadism, passivity and defenselessness seem often to enhance the desirability of the sexual object which was what the Negro woman was for her white masters.

The reader is encouraged by Smith to regard the brutality of w hite men as merely a case of "boys will be boys.” Like many other historians, he paints a picture of slavery in which white men had "normal” male sexual desires that they indulged with submissive slave girls. W hile he acknowledges the sadism that often prompted sexual exploitation o f the black female slave, he minimizes it by implying that it was an extension of "normal” male sexual expression.

The brutal treatment of enslaved black wom en by white men exposed the depths of male hatred of woman and woman’s body. Such treatment was a direct consequence of misogynist attitudes toward wom en that prevailed in colonial American society. In fundamentalist Christian teaching woman was por­ trayed as an evil sexual temptress, the bringer o f sin into the world. Sexual lust originated with her and men were merely the victims o f her wanton power. Socialization o f white men to regard women as their moral downfall led to the development of anti-woman sentiment. W hite male religious teachers taught that woman was an inherently sinful creature o f the flesh whose wickedness could only be purged by the intercession o f a more powerful being. Appointing themselves as the personal agents o f God, they became the judges and overseers o f woman’s virtue. They instigated laws to govern the sexual behavior of white wom en, to ensure that they would not be tempted to stray from the straight and narrow path. Severe

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punishments were meted out to those women who overstepped the boundaries white men defined as woman’s place. The Salem Witchcraft trials were an extreme expression of patriarchal society’s persecution o f women. They were a message to all women that unless they remained within passive, subordinate roles they would be punished, even put to death.

The numerous laws enacted to govern sexual behavior among early American whites have caused some scholars to conclude that the movement toward sexual repression in colo­ nial society occurred as a reaction against the sexual permissive­ ness of the colonizers. Andrew Sinclair comments:

The terrible liberty of isolation and the wilderness made some of the first settlers discard their European moral restraints. Cases of bestiality, according to Cotton Mather, were not unknown.... As the first missionaries of the West were told, barbarism was the first danger to the pioneers, 'They will think it no degradation to do before the woods and wild animals, what, in the presence of a cultivated social state they would blush to perpetrate.’ Until a stern public opinion could govern the ethics of a scattered and immigrant society, small governments tried to do what they could to keep up the standards of civilization.

W hite colonizers sought to suppress sexuality because of their deep fear of sexual feelings, their belief that such feelings were sinful, and their fear of eternal damnation. Colonial white men placed the responsibility for sexual lust onto women and conse­ quently regarded them with the same suspicion and distrust they associated with sexuality in general. Such intense fear and distrust of women bred misogynistic feeling. In the Trouble­ som e H elpm ate, Katherine Rogers offers an explanation for the emergence of misogynic feeling:

Of the cultural causes of misogyny, rejection of or guilt about sex is the most obvious. It leads naturally to degradation of woman as the sexual object and projection onto her of the lust and desire to seduce which a man must repress in himself. At the same time that he denigrated woman’s sexual function, the preoccupation with sex resulting from the attempt to repress desire is apt to make him see her exclusively as a sexual being, more lustful than man and not spiritual at all....

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Misogyny can also develop as a result of the idealiza­ tion with which men have glorified women as mistresses, wives, and mothers. This has led to a natural reaction, a desire to tear down what has been raised unduly high.

Colonial white men expressed their fear and hatred of woman­ hood by institutionalizing sexist discrimination and sexist oppression.

In the 19th century, the growing economic prosperity of white Americans caused them to stray from the stern religious teachings that had shaped the life of the first colonizers. With the shift away from fundamentalist Christian doctrine came a change in male perceptions of women. 19th century white women were no longer portrayed as sexual temptresses; they were extolled as the "nobler half of humanity” whose duty was to elevate men’s sentiments and inspire their higher impulses. The new image of white womanhood was diametrically opposed to the old image. She was depicted as goddess rather than sinner; she was virtuous, pure, innocent, not sexual and wordly. By raising the white female to a goddess-like status, white men effectively removed the stigma Christianity had placed on them. White male idealization of white women as innocent and virtuous served as an act of exorcism, which had as its purpose transforming her image and ridding her of the curse of sexuality. The message of the idealization was this: as long as white women possessed sexual feeling they would be seen as degraded immoral creatures; remove those sexual feel­ ings and they become beings worthy of love, consideration, and respect. Once the white female was mythologized as pure and virtuous, a symbolic Virgin Mary, white men could see her as exem pt from negative sexist stereotypes of the female. The price she had to pay was the suppression of natural sexual impulses. Given the strains of endless pregnancies and the hardships of childbirth, it is understandable that 19th century white women felt no great attachment to their sexuality and gladly accepted the new, glorified de-sexualized identity white men imposed upon them. Most white women eagerly absorbed sexist ideology that claimed virtuous women had no sexual impulses. So convinced were they of the necessity to hide their sexuality that they were unwilling to undress to expose sick

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body parts to male physicians. A French visitor to America observed, "American women divide their whole body in two parts; from the top to the waist is the stomach; from there to the foot is ankles.” On this same subject Page Smith comments:

They were too modest to let a doctor touch their bodies and they could not even bring themselves, in some instances, to describe an ailment, like one young mother with an ulcer­ ated breast who, too prudish to speak frankly to the doctor, described her condition as a pain in the stomach.

Forcing white women to deny their physical beings was as much an expression of male hatred of woman as was regarding them as sex objects. Idealization of white women did not change the basic contempt white men felt towards them. V isi­ tors from foreign countries often noticed the veiled hostility of white men towrds white women. One visitor commented:

American men accorded their women more deference, lavished more money on them, regarded them with more respect than was accorded the women of any country. But they did not particularly like them. They did not enjoy their company; they did not find them interesting in themselves. They valued them as wives and mothers, they sentimental­ ized over them; they congratulated themselves on their enlightened attitude toward them. But they did not (and they do not) particularly like them.

The shift away from the image of white woman as sinful and sexual to that of white woman as virtuous lady occurred at the same time as mass sexual exploitation o f enslaved black w om en— just as the rigid sexual morality of Victorian England created a society in which the extolling o f woman as mother and helpmeet occurred at the same time as the formation o f a mass underworld o f prostitution. As American white men idealized white womanhood, they sexually assaulted and brutal­ ized black women. Racism was by no means the sole cause of many cruel and sadistic acts of violence perpetrated by w hite men against enslaved black women. The deep hatred of woman that had been embedded in the white colonizer’s psyche by patriarchal ideology and anti-woman religious teachings both motivated and sanctioned white male brutality against black women. At the onset of their arrival in the American colonies,

black women and men faced a society that was eager to impose upon the displaced African the identity of "sexual savage.” As white colonizers adopted a self-righteous sexual morality for themselves, they even more eagerly labeled black people sexual heathens. Since woman was designated as the originator of sexual sin, black women were naturally seen as the embodiment o f female evil and sexual lust. They were labeled jezebels and sexual temptresses and accused o f leading white men away from spiritual purity into sin. One white politician urged that blacks be sent back to Africa so that white men would not fornicate or commit adultery. H is words were "remove this temptation from us.” Although religious white women, white men, and black men argued that white men were morally responsible for sexual assaults on black women, they tended to accept the notion that men succumb to female sexual tempta­ tion. Because sexist religious doctrines had taught them that women were the seducers of men, they believed black women were not totally blameless. Frequently, they used the term "prostitution” to refer to the buying and selling of black women for sexually exploitative purposes. Since prostitutes are women and men who engage in sexual behavior for money or pay of som e kind, it is a term inaccurately used when applied to enslaved black women who rarely received compensation for the use of their bodies as sexual latrines. Abolitionist women and men labeled black women "prostitutes” because they were trapped by the language o f the Victorian ethos. In speaking of the mass sexual abuse of black women, noted black orator Frederick Douglass told an abolitionist audience in Rochester, N ew York in 1850 that "every slaveholder is the legalized keeper of a house of ill-fame.” Yet his words did not begin to accurately describe the sexual exploitation of black women. Douglass informed his audience:

I hold myself ready to prove that more than a million of women, in the Southern States of this Union, are, by laws of the land, and through no fault of their own, consigned to a life of revolting prostitution; that by those laws, in many of the States, if a woman, in defense of her own innocence, shall lift her hand against the brutal aggressor, she may be lawfully put to death... It is also known that slave women,

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who are nearly white, are sold in those markets, at prices which proclaim, trumpet-tongued, the accursed purposes by which they are to be devoted. Youth and elegance, beauty and innocence, are exposed for sale upon the auction block; while villainous monsters stand around, with pock­ ets lined with gold, gazing with lustful eyes upon their prospective victims.

It was difficult for abolitionists to discuss the rape of black women for fear of offending audiences, so they concentrated on the theme of prostitution. But the use of the word prostitution to describe mass sexual exploitation of enslaved black women by white men not only deflected attention away from the prevalence of forced sexual assault, it lent further credibility to the myth that black females were inherently wanton and there­ fore responsible for rape.

Contemporary sexist scholars minimize the impact of sexual exploitation of black women on the black female psyche and argue that white men used the rape of black women to further emasculate black men. Black sociologist Robert Staples asserts:

The rape of the slave woman brought home to the slave man his inability to protect his woman. Once his mascu- linization was undermined in this respect, he would begin to experience profound doubts about his power even to break the chains of bondge.

Staples’ argument is based on the assumption that enslaved black men felt responsible for all black women and were demoralized because of their inability to act as protectors— an assumption that has not been substantiated by historical evidence. An examination of many traditional African societies’ attitudes toward women reveals that African men were not taught to see themselves as the protectors of all women. They were taught to assume responsibility for the particular women of their tribe or community. The socialization of African men to see themselves as the "owners” of all black women and to regard them as property they should protect occurred after the long years of slavery and as the result of bonding on the basis of color rather than shared tribal connection or language. Prior to their adoption of white American sexist attitudes toward

women, there was no reason for enslaved African men to feel responsible for all enslaved African women. Assuredly, the sexual assault of black women had an impact on the psyches of black male slaves. It is likely that the black male slave did not feel demoralized or de-humanized because "his” women were being raped, but that he did feel terrorized by the knowledge that white men who were willing to brutalize and victimize black women and girls (who represented no great threat to their authority), might easily have no qualms about totally annihilating black men. Most black male slaves stood quietly by as white masters sexually assaulted and brutalized black women and were not compelled to act as protectors. Their first instincts were toward self-preservation. In her slave narrative, Linda Brent tells readers that black male slaves as a group did not see themselves as the protectors of black slave women. She comments:

There are some who strive to protect wives and daughters from the insults of their master; but those who have such sentiments have advantages above the general mass of slaves... Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that they will sneak out of the house to give their masters free access to their wives and daughters.

Throughout the years of slavery, individual black men rallied to the defense of black women who were important to them. Their defense of these women was not motivated by a sense of themselves as the natural protectors of all black women.

Historian Eugene Genovese discusses the sexual exploita­ tion of enslaved black females in Roll, Jordan, Roll, and contends:

Rape meant, by definition, rape of white women, for no such crime as rape of a black woman existed at law. Even when a black man sexually attacked a black woman, he could only be punished by his master; no way existed to bring him to trial or to convict him if so brought.

The rape of black women by black male slaves is further indication that, rather than assuming the role of protector, black men imitated the white male’s behavior. Genovese concludes:

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Some drivers forced the slave woman in much the same way as did some masters and overseers. It remains an open question which of those powerful white and black males forced the female slaves more often. Under the task system the driver set the day’s work for each slave and had no trouble making a woman’s lot miserable if she refused him. Under the more prevalent gang system, drivers could lay the whip on with impunity—if they had the power to whip at all—as many did—or they could find any number of other ways to reward and punish.

Given the barbaric nature of slave life, it is likely that black slave w om en allied with powerful black men who could protect them from the unwanted sexual advances o f other slaves. Sexual jealousies and rivalries were a primary cause of most quarrels between black slave men.

The enslaved black woman could not look to any group of men, white or black, to protect her against sexual exploita­ tion. Often in desperation, slave women attempted to enlist the aid of white mistresses, but these attempts usually failed. Some mistresses responded to the distress of female slaves by perse­ cuting and tormenting them. Others encouraged the use o f black women as sex objects because it allowed them respite from unwanted sexual advances. In rare cases, white mistresses who were reluctant to see sons marry and leave home pur­ chased black maids to be sexual playmates for them. Those white w om en who deplored the sexual exploitation o f slave wom en were usually reluctant to involve themselves with a slave’s plight for fear of jeopardizing their own position in the domestic household. Most white women regarded black women who were the objects of their husbands’ sexual assaults with hostility and rage. Having been taught by religious teachings that women were inherently sexual temptresses, mistresses often believed that the enslaved black woman was the culprit and their husbands the innocent victims. In Once A Slave, a book which contains a condensed body of information gleaned from slave narratives, the author Stanley Feldstein recounts an incident in which a white mistress returned home unexpectedly from an outing, opened the doors of her dressing room, and discovered her husband raping a thirteen year old slave girl. She

responded by beating the girl and locking her in a smokehouse. The girl was whipped daily for several weeks. W hen older slaves pleaded on the child’s behalf and dared to suggest that the white master was to blame, the mistress simply replied, "She’ll know better in future. After I’ve done with her, she’ll never do the like again through ignorance.” W hite women held black slave w om en responsible for rape because they had been socialized by 19th century sexual morality to regard woman as sexual temptress. This same sexual morality was adopted by slaves. Fellow slaves often pitied the lot o f sexually exploited females but did not see them as blameless victims. One female abolitionist states:

Of all who drooped and withered under the inflictions of this horrible system, the greatest sufferer was defenseless women. For the male slave, however brutally treated, there was some recourse; but for the woman slave there was neither protection nor pity.

Rape was not the only method used to terrorize and de-humanize black women. Sadistic floggings of naked black w om en were another method employed to strip the female slave o f dignity. In the Victorian world, where white wom en were religiously covering every body part, black women were daily stripped of their clothing and publicly whipped. Slave­ owners were well aware that it added to the degradation and humiliation o f female slaves for them to be forced to appear naked before male whippers and onlookers. A Kentucky slave recalled:

The women are subjected to these punishments as rigo­ rously as the men—not even pregnancy exempts them; in that case before binding them to the stake, a hole is made in the ground to accomodate the enlarged form of the victim.

Susan Boggs recalled:

They would have a woman stripped and cobbed if she did anything they didn’t like. Perhaps if the bread did not rise well, the mistress would tell the master when he came home; and she would be sent to the trader’s jail to be cobbed. It is awful to think of women, of human beings, being exposed in this way.

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Sadistic floggings of nude black women were socially sanc­ tioned because they were seen as racial abuse, a master punishing a recalcitrant slave, but they were also expressions of male contempt and hatred for the female. Solomon Bradley, an ex-slave, told a journalist who interviewed him:

Yes, sir; the most shocking thing that I have seen was on the plantation of Mr. Farrarby, on the line of the railroad. I went up to his house one morning from my work for drinking water, and heard a woman screaming awfully. On going up to the fence and looking over I saw a woman stretched out, face downwards, on the ground her hands and feet being fastened to stakes. Mr. Farrarby was stand­ ing over her and striking her with a leather trace belonging to his carriage harness. As he struck her the flesh of her back and legs were raised in welts and ridges by the force of blows. Sometimes when the poor thing cried too loud from the pain Farrarby would kick her in the mouth. After he exhausted himself whipping her he sent to his house for sealing wax and a lighted candle and, melting the wax, dropped it upon the woman’s lacerated back. H e then got a riding whip and, standing over the woman, picked off the hardened wax by switching at it. Mr. Farrarby’s grown daughters were looking at this from a window of the house through the blinds. This punishment was so terrible that I was induced to ask what offence the woman had committed and was told by her fellow servants that her only crime was in burning the edges of the waffles that she had cooked for breakfast

It takes little imagination to comprehend the significance of one oppressed black woman being brutally tortured while the more privileged white women look passively at her plight. Incidents of this nature exposed to white women the cruelty of their husbands, fathers, and brothers and served as a warning of what might be their fate should they not maintain a passive stance. Surely, it must have occurred to white women that were enslaved black women not available to bear the brunt of such intense anti-women male aggression, they themselves might have been the victims. In most slaveholding homes, white women played as active a role in physical assaults of black women as did white men. While white women rarely physically assaulted black male slaves, they tortured and persecuted black

females. Their alliance with white men on the common ground o f racism enabled them to ignore the anti-woman impulse that also motivated attacks on black women.

Breeding was another socially legitimized method of sexually exploiting black women. I mentioned earlier that white men in colonial America defined the primary function of all women to be that of breeding workers. Contemporary scholars often dismiss the breeding of slave women on the basis that it occurred on such a small scale as to not merit attention. Yet a rather convincing body of evidence exists substantiating not only the existence of slave breeding but the fact that it was a widespread and common practice. Reporting on the slave trade in the state of Virginia in 1819 Frances Corbin wrote, "Our principal profit depends on the increase of our slaves.” During the early years of slavery, breeding of African women was a difficult process. In traditional African communities black women suckled their children at their breasts and weaned them at the late age of two years old. For this time period, the African woman did not engage in sexual intercourse and consequently spaced her pregnancies. This practice allowed women time to recuperate physically before starting a new pregnancy. White slaveowners could not understand the reasons slave women did not bear many children consecutively. Their response to this situation was to use threats of violence as a means of coercing slave women to reproduce. Frederick Olmstead, a southern white observer of the practice of slave breeding, made this comment:

In the states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Ken­ tucky, Tennessee, as much attention is paid to the breeding and growth of negroes as to that of horses and mules. Further south, we raise them both for use and for market. Planters command their girls and women (married or unmarried) to have children; and I have known a great many girls to be sold off because they did not have children. A breeding woman is worth from one-sixth to one-fourth more than one that does not breed.

Advertisements announcing the sale of black female slaves used the terms "breeding slaves,” "child-bearing woman,” "breeding period,” "too old to breed,” to describe individual

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women. Moncure Conway, the son of a Virginia slaveholder, recalled:

As a general thing, the chief pecuniary resource in the border states is the breeding of slaves; and I grieve to say that there is too much ground for the charges that general licentiousness among the slaves for the purpose of a large increase is compelled by some masters and encouraged by many. The period of maternity is hastened, the average youth of negro mothers being nearly three years earlier than that of any free race, and an old maid is utterly known among the women.

Slave women who refused to choose a man and mate with him had men forced upon them by their overseer or master. Some slaveholders preferred to breed black women with white men, as mulattoes frequently brought a higher price on the market or were easier to sell. In a letter dated March 13,1835 a Methodist minister residing in Virginia observed:

Mulattoes are surer than pure negroes. Hence planters have no objection to any white man or boy having free intercourse with all the females; and it has been the case that an overseer has been encouraged to make the whole posse his harem and has been paid for the issue.

Barren black wom en suffered most under the breeding system. In a report presented to the General Anti-Slavery Convention held in London J u n e 1840, witnesses testified that barren black females were the victims of great physical and psychological abuse. The report stated:

Where fruitfulness is the greatest of virtues, barrenness will be regarded as worse than a misfortune, as a crime and the subjects of it will be exposed to every form of privation and affliction. Thus a deficiency, wholly beyond the slave s power becomes the occasion of inconceivable suffering.

In this same report, a N orth Carolina citizen repeated a story told to him by a friend about slave breeding on Carolina plantations.

One day the owner ordered the women into the barn; he then went in among them, whip in hand, and told them he meant to flog them all to death. They began immediately to cry out, 'What have I done massa? What have I done?’ He

Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience 41

replied, 'Damn you, I will let you know what you have done; you don’t breed, I have not had a young one from one of you for several months.’ ”

Some slave owners devised a system of rewards to induce w om en to breed. But such rewards were rarely commensurate with services rendered. On some plantations a woman might be g iven a small pig each time a child was born to her. W om en were promised a new dress or a new pair of shoes at the birth o f a child. A small monetary sum, from one to five dollars, might be given a slave woman at the birth of her fourth or fifth child. A few slaveowners promised freedom to black women who bore large families. A case appeared before the Virginia courts in 1761 in a dispute over a will that included a provision to free a female slave Jenny if she bore ten live children. Some enslaved women desired pregnancy, for they saw it as a means of obtain­ ing certain advantages, the primary one being a lightening of the work load. Frances Kemble in her Journal o f a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 surmised:

On the birth of a child certain additions of clothing and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the family; and these matters small as they may seem, acted as powerful inducements to creatures who have not of the restraining influence activating them which belongs to the parental relation among all other people, whether civilized or savage. Moreover, they have all of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of their value to their owner as property; and a woman thinks, and not so much amiss that the more frequently she adds to the number of her master’s livestock by bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon his consideration and good will.

Breeding was oppressive to all fertile black slave women. Undernourished, overworked women were rarely in a physical condition that would allow for safe easy childbirth. Repeated pregnancies without proper care resulted in numerous mis­ carriages and death. Frances Kemble gave the following account o f the condition of black w om en on her husband’s plantation, women w ho considered themselves w ell off com­ pared to slaves on neighboring plantations:

Fanny has had six children; all dead but one, she came to

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beg to have her work in the field lightened. Nanny has had three children; two of them are dead.

She came to implore that the rule of sending them into the field three weeks after their confinement might be altered.

Leah, Caesar’s wife, has had six children; three are dead.

Sophy, Lewis’s wife, came to beg for some old line. She is suffering fearfully; has had ten children; five of them all dead. The principal favor she asked was a piece of meat, which I gave her.

Sally, Scipio’s wife, has had two miscarriages and three children born, one of whom is dead. She came com­ plaining of incessant pain and weakness in her back. This woman was a mullatto daughter of a slave called Sophy, by a white man of the name of Walker who visited the plantation.

Charlotte, Renty’s wife, has had two miscarriages, and was with child again. She was almost crippled with rheuma­ tism, and showed me a pair of poor swollen knees that made my heart ache. I have promised her a pair of flannel trousers, which I must forthwith set about making.

Sarah, Stephen’s wife; this woman’s case and history alike are deplorable. She has had four miscarriages, had brought seven children into the world, five of whom were dead, and was again with child. She complained of dreadful pains in the back, and an internal tumor which swells with the exertion of working in the fields; probably I think, it is ruptured.... I suppose her constant childbearing and hard labor in the fields at the same time may have produced... temporary insanity...

I ask these questions about their children because I think the number they bear as compared with the number they rear a fair gauge of the effect of the system on their own health and that of their offspring. There was hardly one of these, as you will see by the details I have noted of their ailments, who might not have been a candidate for a bed in a hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields.

Kemble admired the patience with which suffering enslaved black women endured their harsh lot, but she was not unaware of the "utter despair” that was often masked by their quiet acceptance.

Mass sexual exploitation of enslaved black women was a direct consequence of the anti-woman sexual politics of colonial

patriarchal America. Since the black woman was not protected either by law or public opinion, she was an easy target. While racism was clearly the evil that had decreed black people would be enslaved, it was sexism that determined that the lot of the black female would be harsher, more brutal than that of the black male slave. That sexism was not limited solely to white men. The slaveowner’s encouragement of mating between black women and men led to the establishment of a black slave sub-culture. Within the black slave sub-culture a similar sexual politics emerged. Initially, slave women were compelled by their masters to mate indiscriminately. It was not uncommon for a master to grant a favored black male slave the privilege of marrying a slave girl or woman of his choice, even if she was a reluctant partner. This practice was not successful. Resistance to forced mating often led to such social upheavals that most masters deemed it wiser to allow black slave women and men to choose their own partners. The couple would make others aware of their commitment by setting up a nuclear household in a vacant hut or cabin. As the displaced Africans assimilated American values, they wanted to have the ecclesiastical and civil ceremonies their masters and mistresses had; they desired public acknowledgement of their union. Although there were never any legally acknowledged marriages between slaves, they wanted the same marriage rituals their white owners enacted. On some plantations slaves carried out traditional African marriage rites— the asking of relatives for a woman’s hand and the offering of a small dowry. Many white plantation owners incorporated the practice of engaged couples holding hands and jumping over a broom as a marriage ritual for slaves as it had once been a popular ritual among early American white colo­ nizers. On a few plantations, masters allowed marriage cere­ monies to be performed by an ordained minister despite the fact that the service had no legal significance. Most slaves desired a minister to perform the marriage ceremony because they observed that this was a norm of the dominant culture. Undoubtedly courtships and marriages between slaves were important because the happiness of such occasions augmented the harsh reality of slave life. In his slave narrative, Thomas Jones declared that the slave who was:

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despised and trampled upon by a cruel race of unfeeling men would die in the prime of his wretched life, if he found no refuge in a dear home, where love and sympathy shall meet him from hearts made sacred to him by his own irrepressible affections and tendernesses for them.

Sex roles in the black slave sub-culture mirrored those of patriarchal white America. W ithin the black slave sub-culture, it was the black female who cooked for the family, cleaned the hut or cabin, nursed the sick, washed and mended the clothes, and cared for the needs of children. Black slave men regarded tasks like cooking, sewing, nursing, and even minor farm labor as wom an’s work. In her study of white women in the south, The Southern Lady, Anne Scott describes an incident in which a black slave man refused to perform a task he considered beneath his male dignity:

On a farm in a moment of crisis when the mother and all the children were ill, a Negro slave rejected in bewil­ derment the suggestion, that he milk the cow, on the grounds that everybody knew that to be woman’s work and therefore impossible for him to undertake.

While enslaved black men were in no position to be completely accepted as patriarchal authority figures with the right to rule over women, enslaved black females did conform to existing sex-role patterns that granted men higher status than women. Frances Butler Leigh (the daughter of Fanny Kemble) noted that among slaves in the Georgia Sea Islands "the good old law of female submission to the husband’s will on all points held good.” Acceptance of male superiority was particularly em pha­ sized in the religious teachings preached to slaves. Christian slave w om en resolutely believed that it was natural that they be subservient to men. A plantation owner from Lounders Count, Mississippi, Mr. William Ervin, set up rules to govern his slaves which were based on the sex role patterns established by patriarchy. One rule read:

Each family to live in their own house. The husbands to provide fire wood and see that they are all provided for and wait on his wife. The wife to cook and wash for the husband and her children and attend to the mending of clothes. Failure on either part when proven shall and must be

corrected by words first but if not reformed to be corrected by the whip.

T he practice of masters and mistresses identifying a slave woman by her husband’s name (Scipio’s Jane or John’s Sue), indicates that whites accorded the black male slave a higher status than that of the female slave. Historian Eugene Geno­ vese contends:

Sensible masters actually encouraged a limited sexual division of labor among their slaves and saw some advan­ tages in strengthening the power of the male in the household.

As regards hierarchies based solely on race, the social status of black w om en and men was the same, but sexist differentiation caused the lot o f the male to be distinguished from that of the female. A measure o f social equality existed between the sexes in the area of work but nowhere else. Black w om en and men often performed the exact same tasks in agricultural labor, but even in that area black w om en could not rise to leadership positions. Outside the work arena, in day-to-day life, female slaves were treated differently from male slaves and were in som e instances the subordinates of male slaves.

In an attempt to explain the impact of slavery on black sex role patterns, many contemporary scholars have concluded that the black woman was a more important figure in the slave household than the black male, and that as a result masculinity was compromised. An undue emphasis on black "masculinity” has emerged as sociologists and historians have attempted to explain the damaging effects of racist oppression on black people. M isinform ation began circulating w hen scholars shifted the burden of responsibility away from the institution o f slavery and its white supporters onto black people. As part of their effort to explain the negative impact o f slavery on the black family without placing the blame or responsibility on w hite racism, they argued that it could be understood in the framework of black male-female sexual politics. They reasoned that as the black female’s role in the slave household was more important than that o f the black male, his masculinity had been compromised and consequently the fabric of the black family

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structure dissolved. They identify the culprit as the domineer­ ing black woman. White racist colonizers distorted reality when they talked about the de-masculinization of black men. In actuality, there was nothing unusual about slave women assum­ ing a dominant role in the domestic household in 19th century America. In so doing, they were merely imitating the behavior of white mistresses. The dominant role white women played in the 19th century domestic household has not led scholars to theorize about ineffectual white masculinity; quite the opposite has occurred. The 19th century is usually seen as a period in American history when white patriarchy was the stronghold of the American family. But this strong white patriarchy did not prevent 19th century white women from assuming the domi­ nant role in the household. Nancy Cott, author of Bonds o f W omanhood, describes the discrepancy between the patriar­ chal ideal that would have had white men be the supreme head of the household and the 19th century reality:

Legally and economically the husband/father controlled the family, but rhetorically the vocation of domesticity gave women the domestic sphere for their own, to control, and influence. Motherhood was proposed as the central lever with which women would bridge the world and, in practice it offered the best opportunity to women to heighten their domestic power. The authors of "domestic education” books assumed that children lived mostly in the presence of their mothers and not their fathers, even though final authority (legally and conventionally) was patriarchal.

It is safe to assume that if white women playing a dominant role in the 19th century domestic household did not lead to the de-masculinization and undermining of white male power, the enslaved black woman playing a dominant role in the slave household represented no threat to the already powerless black male. The major distinction between the familial role played by white male slaveowners and that of black male slaves within the sub-culture was that black men were denied the opportunity to act as providers for their families. According to some scholars, it was the inability of black men to adequately provide coupled with the dominant role played by black women in slave households that resulted in de-masculinization. They ignore

two realities. First, that in 19th century America emphasis on the home and family as "woman’s sphere" was all pervasive, so that it was not unusual for the role played by black women to take precedence over that of black men. And the reality was that black men were able workers and providers, only white people reaped the benefits of their labor. It is ludicrous to assume that black men who labored at their various tasks from twelve to sixteen hours a day had doubts about their ability to provide— and is probably more accurate to assert that enslaved black men, rather than feeling de-masculinized, were outraged and angry that racist oppression prevented them from reaping the bene­ fits of their labor. In keeping with the sexual politics of 19th century America, many black slave men felt very strongly that it was their duty to provide for the economic well-being o f their family and they felt bitter resentment and remorse that the slave system did not enable them to fulfill this role. Feeling remorse, anger, and resentment cannot be seen as synonymous with feeling de-masculinized.

Enslaved black people accepted patriarchal definitions of male-female sex roles. They believed, as did their white owners, that woman’s role entailed remaining in the domestic house­ hold, rearing children, and obeying the will of husbands. Anne Scott sums up the image of the 19th century idealized woman in the following passage:

This marvelous creation was described as a submissive wife whose reason for being was to love, honor, obey, and occasionally amuse her husband, to bring up his children and manage his household. Physically weak, and 'formed for the less laborious occupations,’ she depended upon male protection. To secure this protection she was en­ dowed with the capacity to 'create a magic spell' over any man in her vicinity. She was timid and modest, beautiful and graceful, 'the most fascinating being in creation... the delight and charm of every circle she moves in.’

Part of her charm lay in her innocence.... She was capable of acute perceptions about human relationships, and was a creature of tact, discernment, sympathy, and compassion. It was her nature to be self-denying, and she was given to suffering in silence, a characteristic said to endear her to men. Less endearing, perhaps, but no less natural, was her piety and her tendency to 'restrain man’s

Sexism and the Black Female Slave Experience 47

48 A IN ’T I A W OM AN

natural vice and immorality.’ She was thought to be most deeply interested in the success of every scheme which curbs the passions and enforces a true morality.’

T he "cult o f true womanhood” that emerged during the 19th century had an intense demoralizing impact on enslaved black females. They were not proud of their ability to labor alongside men in the fields and wanted more than anything for their lot to be the same as that of white women. W hite male slaveowners and overseers found that slave women could best be manipulated by promises of a new dress, a hair ribbon, or a parasol— anything that emphasized their femininity. So great was the slave woman’s desire to appear feminine and ladylike that many chose to wear dresses to work in the fields rather than don trousers that, though more practical, were seen as masculine attire. Originally displaced African women attached no stigma to female labor in the fields but as they assimilated white American values they accepted the notion that it was debasing and degrading for women to work in the fields. As a farm laborer, the black male slave performed the same tasks he would have had to perform as a free person, but black wom en were well aware that it was not deemed ladylike or respectable for women to work in the fields. Henry Watson, a plantation owner in Alabama, complained to his daughter in 1865 about the black female workers on his plantation:

The women say that they never mean to do anymore outdoor work, that white men support their wives; and they mean that their husbands shall support them.

Although black female slaves often boasted o f their work ability, they longed to be treated with the same regard and consideration they believed was due them as a woman’s privilege in patriarchal society. Watson reported at a later date:

The female laborers are almost invariably idle—do not go into the fields but desire to play the lady and be supported by their husbands 'like the white folks do.’

T he fact that enslaved black women were forced to labor as "men” and to exist independently of male protection and pro­ vision did not lead to the development of a feminist conscious­

ness. They did not advocate social equality between the sexes. Instead they bitterly resented that they were not considered "women” by the dominant culture and therefore were not the recipients of the considerations and privileges given white women. Modesty, sexual purity, innocence, and a submissive manner were the qualities associated with womanhood and femininity that enslaved black women endeavored to attain even though the conditions under which they lived continually undermined their efforts. W hen freedom came, black women resolved to cease their labor in the fields. W hite plantation owners were shocked when large numbers of black female workers refused to work in the fields once slavery ended. An examination of 1865 and 1866 plantation records caused Theodore W ilson to surmise that "the greatest loss to the labor force resulted from the decision of growing numbers of N egro w om en to donate their time to their homes and children.” On those plantations where black wom en continued to labor in the fields, owners complained that they left their cabins too late in the morning and quit too early in the afternoon. W hite Southerners expressed amazement that it was a matter of pride among black people for men to support their wives and families. In some cases whites so resented the loss o f female workers that they charged black men extra for food and shelter if their wives did not work. By completely accepting the female role as defined by patriarchy, enslaved black women embraced and upheld an oppressive sexist social order and became (along with their white sisters) both accomplices in the crimes perpetrated against women and the victims of those crimes.

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