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LITR 4332 American Minority Literature Model Assignments Research Project Submissions 2013 research post 1 |
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Carolee Osborne
March 23, 2013
Slaves: Not just White and Black
African American slaves endured countless
acts of cruelty towards them at the hands of their oppressors; their slave
owners. However, I begin to wonder if gender played a role on the amount of
cruelty that was delivered. Did
women suffer greater cruelty than men? While the African American men were
slaves physically, did the women suffer the duality of both physical and mental
slaves? Throughout my research I have concluded that these questions are true.
Howard Zinn, author of History is a
weapon, states that woman’s “physical
characteristics became a convenience for men, who could use, exploit, and
cherish someone who was at the same time servant, sex mate, companion, and
bearer-teacher-warden of his children.” (ch 6). Not only were African
American slave women exploited and were forced to undergo the everyday
sufferings of men and women alike, but sexual exploitation, exploitation of her
working environment, and the exploitation of her own family created a society of
women who were dual slaves.
One important reason for the dual slave anomaly was the common
sexual abuse of the African American slaves. Because
they did not own their own bodies, they were forced to do unspeakable
things. They were not only slaves in their everyday lives but in the bedroom as
well. Joe Fagin describes this in his book
Double
Burden: Black Women and Everyday Racism
where he explains that “during slavery African American women were
routinely exploited sexually by some white men in positions of authority” (103).
In many cases the African American female became a means to commit infidelity
which caused friction between the female slave, who had no control over the
situation, and the wife of the slave owner. Fagin further strengthens the dual
slave anomaly by suggesting a contradiction in which “white men often professed
being revolted by the physical characteristics, including body odors (usually
from hard, sweaty work), of those whom they enslaved. Somehow,
nonetheless, white men suppressed this "distaste" and sexually exploited many
enslaved black women (104). This contradiction became true for most aspects in
the life of a female slave.
Most female African American slaves were servants and nurses
to the slave owner’s children, which led to the exploitation of her working
environment and her downward slope towards becoming a dual slave. Maurice Crouse
depicts a contrast between the popular idea of the African American slave nurse
and the reality of the nurse. She teaches that “the black nursemaid was seen as
a dutiful, self-sacrificing black woman who loved her white family and its
children every bit as much as her own. Yet the popular images of the loyal,
contented black nursemaid, or “mammy,” were unfortunately far from the reality
for the African-American women who worked in these homes” (Crouse). Though an
interview with a reporter from The
Independence conducted in 1912, an African American female slave recounts
her life as a nurse in a white family’s home. She reveals that as a female slave
“[she] frequently [works] from fourteen to sixteen hours a day. [She is]
compelled … to sleep in the house. [She is] allowed to go home to my own
children, the oldest of whom is a girl of 18 years, only once in two weeks,
every other Sunday afternoon—even then [she is] not permitted to stay all
night.” (Crouse). This is a truth that continued even after slavery was
abolished.
A female slave was not only affected through her body and her
working life, her family suffered as well. Heather Williams, author of
How Slavery Affected African American
Families, teaches the struggles African American slave mother faced while
trying to raise their own families. She explains that one problem was the fact
that “Some enslaved people lived in nuclear families
with a mother, father, and children. In these cases each family member belonged
to the same owner.” (Williams). However, “Others lived in near-nuclear families
in which the father had a different owner than the mother and children”
(Williams). Among these hardships
there were other threats that consumed the slave family. Williams depicts one of
these particular threats came from the fact that “Enslaved people lived with the
perpetual possibility of separation through the sale of one or more family
members” (Williams). This meant that at any given moment, a slave mother could
lose her child to another slave family and never see that child again.
The idea of the female African American slave as being a dual
slave stems from the fact that they had to endure hardships in addition to what
the men had to endure. As a female, she was not in control of her own body and
therefore was subject to sexual exploitation. As a dual slave, she also is
exploited through her workings as a nurse or servant by the fact that she is
forced to put the slave owner’s family above her own. Due to these things, her
family life suffered as well. She was faced with the idea that she may one day
lose her children to slavery and never see them again.
These state a classic case of African American women as being dual
slaves. The slave men suffered physical abuse, but the women suffered both
physical and emotional abuse that would linger for the rest of their lives.
Works Cited
Crouse, Maurice. “History Matters: We Are Literally Slaves”: An Early Twentieth-Century Black Nanny Sets the Record Straight”. Web. Accessed March 22, 2013. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/80/.
St. Jean, Yanick, and Joe R. Feagin. Double Burden : Black
Women And Everyday Racism. n.p.: M.E. Sharpe, 1998. eBook Collection
(EBSCOhost). Web. 21Mar. 2013.
Williams, Heather Andrea. “How Slavery Affected African American Families.” Freedom’s Story, TeacherServe©. National Humanities Center. March 23, 2013. http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/tserve/freedom/1609-1865/essays/aafamilies.htm
Zinn, Howard. “History Is A weapon: The Intimately Oppressed”.
Web. Accessed March 21, 2013.
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/zinnint6.html
