Female slavery in the United States

Female slavery in the United States

aspect of history

Country	United States

Living insyd a wide range of circumstances den possessing de intersecting identity of both black den female, enslaved women of African descent na e nuance experiences of slavery. Historian Deborah Gray White dey explain dat "de uniqueness of de African-American female ein situation be say she dey stand at de crossroads of two of de most well-developed ideologies insyd America, wey dey regard women den dat wey dey regard de Negro." Beginning as early on insyd enslavement as de voyage on de Middle Passage, na enslaved women receive different treatment secof dema gender. In regard to physical labor den hardship, na enslaved women receive similar treatment to dema male counterparts, buh na dem sanso frequently experience sexual abuse at de hand of dema enslavers wey use stereotypes of black women dema hypersexuality as justification.

Notable enslaved women

Sojourner Truth circa 1864

• Ellen Craft (1826–1897) wey na she be a slave wey komot Macon, Georgia.
• Harriet Jacobs (1813 or 1815 – March 7, 1897), author of Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, now dem consider a classic of American literature.
• Harriet Tubman (born Araminta Harriet Ross; 1820 – March 10, 1913) na she be an African American abolitionist, humanitarian, den Union spy during de American Civil War.
• Lucy Terry (c. 1730–1821) be de author of de oldest known work of literature by an African American.
• Margaret Garner (called Peggy) (c. 1833/1834–c.1858) na she be an enslaved African American woman insyd pre-Civil War United States wey na she be notorious—anaa dem celebrate—for killing ein own daughter after na dem capture am dey follow ein escape, rather dan make she allow de kiddie to be returned to slavery.
• Phillis Wheatley (May 8, 1753 – December 5, 1784) na she be de first African-American poet den de first African-American woman make she publish a book.
• Sojourner Truth (c. 1797 – November 26, 1883) na e be de self-given name, from 1843 onward, of Isabella Baumfree, an African American abolitionist den women's rights activist.

Read further

• Adams, Catherine, and Elizabeth H. Pleck. Love of freedom: Black women in colonial and revolutionary New England (Oxford UP, 2010).
• Bell, Karen Cook. Running from Bondage: Enslaved Women and Their Remarkable Fight for Freedom in Revolutionary America (Cambridge UP, 2021). excerpt
• Berkin, Carol. Revolutionary Mothers: Women in the Struggle for America's Independence (2005) online
• Berry, Daina Ramey. "Swing the sickle for the harvest is ripe": gender and slavery in antebellum Georgia (U of Illinois Press, 2007).
• Camp, Stephanie M. H. Closer to Freedom: Enslaved Women and Everyday Resistance in the Plantation South (U of North Carolina Press, 2004).
• Cooper, Abigail. 'Away I Goin'to Find my Mamma': Self-Emanicipation, Migration, and Kinship in Refugee Camps in the Civil War Era." Journal of African American History 102.4 (2017): 444-467.
• Dunaway, Wilma. The African-American Family in Slavery and Emancipation (Cambridge UP, 2003).
• Feinstein, Rachel. "Intersectionality and the role of white women: an analysis of divorce petitions from slavery." Journal of Historical Sociology 30.3 (2017): 545–560.
• Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth. Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South (U of North Carolina Press, 1988). online
• Fraser, Rebecca J. Courtship and Love among the Enslaved in North Carolina (U Press of Mississippi, 2007).
• Frederickson, Mary E. and Delores M. Walters, eds. Gendered Resistance: Women, Slavery and the Legacy of Margaret Garner (University of Illinois Press, 2013).
• Glymph, Thavolia, et al. Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household (Cambridge UP, 2008). online
• Gutman, Herbert G. The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom, 1750-1925 (Vintage, 1976). online
• Hamad, Ruby. White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color. United States: Catapult, 2020.
• Hilde, Libra R. Slavery, fatherhood, and paternal duty in African American communities over the long nineteenth century (UNC Press Books, 2020).
• Hudson Jr, Larry E., ed. Working toward freedom: Slave society and domestic economy in the American South (U of Rochester Press, 1994).
• Hunter, Tara W. To 'Joy My Freedom': Southern Black Women's Lives and Labors After the Civil War. (Harvard UP, 1997.
• Jennings, Thelma. 'Us Colored Women Had to Go Though a Plenty': Sexual Exploitation of African-American Slave Women." Journal of Women's History 1.3 (1990): 45-74.
• Jones, Jacqueline. "'My Mother Was Much of a Woman': Black Women, Work, and the Family Under Slavery."  Feminist Studies, vol. 8, no. 2, Summer 1982, pp. 235-69.
• King, Wilma. 'Prematurely Knowing of Evil Things': The Sexual Abuse of African American Girls and Young Women in Slavery and Freedom." Journal of African American History 99, no. 3 (Summer 2014): 173–96.
• Malone, Ann Patton. Sweet Chariot: Slave Family and Household Structure in Nineteenth Century Louisiana (U of North Carolina Press, 1992).
• Martin, Joan. More than chains and toil: A Christian work ethic of enslaved women (John Knox Press, 2000).
• Miller, Melinda C. "Destroyed by slavery? Slavery and African American family formation following emancipation." Demography 55.5 (2018): 1587–1609.
• Morgan, Philip D. Slave counterpoint: Black culture in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (UNC Press Books, 2012).
• Nunley, Tamika Y. "Thrice Condemned: Enslaved Women, Violence, and the Practice of Leniency in Antebellum Virginia Courts." Journal of Southern History 87.1 (2021): 5-34. online
• Nunley, Tamika Y. At the Threshold of Liberty: Women, Slavery, and Shifting Identities in Washington, DC (UNC Press Books, 2021). excerpt
• O'Neil, Patrick W. 'Marriage Trauma' and Homosocial First Aid: Surveillance and Submission among Slaveholding Women." Journal of Women's History 29.2 (2017): 109-131.
• Pargas, Damian Alan. 'Various means of providing for their own tables': Comparing Slave Family Economies in the Antebellum South." American Nineteenth Century History 7.3 (2006): 361–387.
• Pinto, Samantha. Infamous Bodies: Early Black Women's Celebrity and the Afterlives of Rights (Duke UP, 2020).
• Saxton, Martha. Being good: Women's moral values in early America (Macmillan, 2004).
• Schwalm, Leslie. A Hard Fight for We: Women's Transition from Slavery to Freedom in South Carolina (U of Illinois Press, 1997).
• Schwartz, Marie Jenkins. Born in bondage: Growing up enslaved in the antebellum South (Harvard UP, 2009).
• Smithers, Gregory D. Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence and Memory in African American History U Press of Florida, 2012).
• Sommerville, Diane Miller. Rape and Race in the Nineteenth-Century South (U of North Carolina Press, 2004).
• Stevenson, Brenda E. Life in Black and White: family and community in the slave south (Oxford UP, 1997).
• Weiner, Marli Frances. Mistresses and Slaves: Plantation Women in South Carolina, 1830-80 (U of Illinois Press, 1998).
• Wells-Oghoghomeh, Alexis. The Souls of Womenfolk: The Religious Cultures of Enslaved Women in the Lower South (UNC Press Books, 2021).
• West, Emily with Knight, R. J. 'Mothers' Milk': Slavery, Wet-Nursing, and Black and White Women in the Antebellum South." Journal of Southern History 83#1` (2017): 37–68.
• West, Emily. Chains of Love: Slave Couples in Antebellum South Carolina (U of Illinois Press, 2014).
• White, Deborah Gray. "Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status in the Antebellum Plantation South." Journal of Family History 8#3 (1983): 48–61.
• White, Deborah Gray. Ar'n't I a woman?: Female slaves in the plantation South (WW Norton & Company, 1999).

Historiography den memory

• McElya, Micki. Clinging to Mammy: The Faithful Slave in Twentieth-Century America (Harvard UP, 2007); on 20th century construed white memories of happy times with slave women.
• West, Emily. "Reflections on the History and Historians of the black woman's role in the community of slaves: enslaved women and intimate partner sexual violence." American Nineteenth Century History 19.1 (2018): 1-21. online