Seven First Hand Accounts Of Forced Breeding And Rape Of Enslaved Women
For The Sake Of Profit
I’ve written several stories regarding the forced breeding and rape of enslaved women for profit in America. This is one subject rarely taught in schools and in fact has been reclassified as “natural increase.” Perhaps my words have been insufficient in making clear the atrocities committed against Black women and families. I’m now providing some first-hand accounts from those who experienced it, not for enjoyment but for understanding. Seven accounts were not all that was available, but all I could bear.
“Marse Jim called me and Sam ter him and ordered Sam to pull off his shirt that was all the McClain niggers wore and he said to me: Nor, do you think you can stand this big nigger? He had that old bull whip flung acrost his shoulder, and Lawd, that man could hit so hard! So I jes said „yassur, I guess so,‟ and tried to hide my face so I couldn‟t see Sam‟s nakedness, but he made me look at him anyhow. Well, he told us what we must git busy and do in his presence, and we had to do it. After that we were considered man and wife. Me and Sam was a healthy pair and had fine, big babies, so I never had another man forced on me, thank God. Sam was kind to me and I learnt to love him.” Loiusa Everett
“A slave girl was expected to have children as soon as she became a woman. Some of them had children at the age of twelve and thirteen years old. . . .
Mother said there were cases where these young girls loved someone else and would have to receive the attentions of men of the master‟s choice. This was a general custom. . . The masters called themselves Christians, went to church worship regularly and yet allowed this condition to exist.” John Cole
“Dere am one thing Massa Hawkins does to me what I can‟t shunt from my mind. I knows he don’t do it for meanness, but I allus [always] holds it ‘gainst him. What he done am force me to live with dat nigger, Rufus, ‘gainst my wants. After I been at he place ‘bout a year, de massa come to me and say, “You gwine live with Rufus in dat cabin over yonder. Go fix it for livin’. I’s ‘bout sixteen year old and has no larnin’, and I’s jus ignomus chile. I‟s thought dat him mean for me to tend de cabin for Rufus and some other niggers. Well, dat am start de pestigation for me.
I’s took charge of de cabin after work am done and fixes supper. Now, I don’t like dat Rufus, ‘cause he a bully. He am big and ‘cause he so, he think everybody do what him say. We uns has supper, den I goes here and dere talkin’, till I’s ready for sleep and den I gits in de bunk. After I’s in, dat nigger come and crawl in de bunk with me ‘fore I knows it. I says, “What you means, you fool nigger!” He say for me to hush de mouth. “Dis em my bunk, too,” he say. “You‟s teched in de head. Git out,” I’s told him, and I puts de feet ‘gainst him and give him a shove and out he go on de floor ‘fore he know what I’s doin’. Dat nigger jump up and he mad.He look like de wild boar. He starts for de bunk and I jumps quick for de poker. It am ‘bout three foot long and when he comes at me I lets him have it over de head. Did dat nigger stop in he tracks! I’s say he did. He looks at me steady for a minute and you‟s could tell he thinkin‟ hard. Den he go and set on de bench and say, “Jus wait. You thinks it am smart, but you’s am foolishin de head. Dey’s gwine larn you somethin.” “Hush yous big mouth and stay ‟way from dis nigger, dat all I wants,” I say, and jus sets and hold dat poker in de hand. He jus sets, lookin’ like de bull. Dere we’uns sets and sets for ‘bout an hour and den he go out and I bars de door.
De nex’ day I goes to de missy [mistress: master‟s wife] and tells her what Rufus wants and missy say dat am de massa’s wishes. She say, “Yous am de portly gal and Rufus am de portly man. De massa wants you-uns for to bring forth portly chillen.”
I’s thinkin’ ‘bout what de missy say, but say to myse’f, “I’s not gwine live with dat Rufus.” Dat night when him come in de cabin, I grabs de poker and sits on de bench and says, “Git ‘way fromme, nigger, ‘fore I busts yous brains out and stomp on dem.” He say nothin’ and git out. De nex’ day de massa call me and tell me, “Woman, I’s pay big money for you and I’s done dat for de cause I wants yous to raise me chillens.”
“I’s put yous to live with Rufus for dat purpose. Now, if you doesn’t want whippin’ at de stake, yous do what I wants.” I thinks ‘bout massa buyin’ me offen de [auction] block and savin’ me from bein’ sep’rated from my folks and ‘bout bein’ whipped at de stake. Dere it am. What am I’s to do? So I ‘cides to do as de massa wish and so I yields. . . .”
I never marries, ‟cause one ‟sperience am ‟nough for dis nigger. After what I does for de massa,I‟s never wants no truck with any man. De Lawd forgive dis cullud woman, but he have to ‟scuseme and look for some others for to ‟plenish de earth.” Rose Williams
“Dey lots of places where de young massas has heirs by nigger gals. Dey sell dem jes’ like otherslaves. Dat purty, common. It seems like de white women don‟t mind. Dey didn’t ‘ject [object],’cause dat mean more slaves.” Chris Franklin
“Durin’ slavery if one marster had a big boy en ‘nuther had a big gal de marsters made dem libe tergedder. Ef’n de ‘oman didn’t hab any chilluns, she wuz put on de block en sold en ‘nuther‟oman bought. You see dey raised de chilluns ter mek money on jes lak we raise pigs ter sell.” Sylvia Watkins
“I knew a man at the South who had six children by a colored slave. Then there was a fuss between him and his wife, and he sold all the children but the oldest slave daughter. Afterward, he had a child by this daughter, and sold mother and child before the birth. This was nearly forty years ago. Such things are done frequently in the South. One brother sells the other. I have seen that done.” William Thompson
“There was a whisper that my master was my father, yet it was only a whisper, and I cannot say that I ever gave it credence. Indeed, I now have reason to think he was not. Nevertheless, the fact remains, in all its glaring odiousness, that, by the laws of slavery, children in all cases are reduced to the condition of their mothers. This arrangement admits of the greatest license to brutal slaveholders and their profligate sons, brothers, relations, and friends, and gives to the pleasure of sin the additional attraction of profit. A whole volume might be written on this single feature of slavery, as I have observed it.
One might imagine that the children of such connections would fare better in the hands of their masters than other slaves. The rule is quite the other way, and a very little reflection will satisfy the reader that such is the case. A man who will enslave his own blood may not be safely relied on for magnanimity. Men do not love those who remind them of their sins unless they have a mind to repent and the mulatto child‟s face is a standing accusation against him who is master and father to the child. What is still worse, perhaps, such a child is a constant offense to the wife. She hates its very presence, and when a slaveholding woman hates, she wants not means [she doesn’t lack methods] to give that hate-telling effect.
Women white women, I mean are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES, for the slave women are preferred in many instances; and if these idols but nod or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs, and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their slaves out of deference to the feelings of their white wives; and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man to sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an act of humanity toward the slave-child to be thus removed from his merciless tormentors.” Frederick Douglass
“I was regarded as fair-looking for one of my race, and for four years a white man I spare the world his name had base designs upon me. I do not care to dwell upon this subject, for it is one that is fraught with pain. Suffice it to say that he persecuted me for four years, and I became a mother. The child of which he was the father was the only child that I ever brought into the world.
If my poor boy ever suffered any humiliating pangs on account of birth, he could not blame his mother, for God knows that she did not wish to give him life. He must blame the edicts of that society which deemed it no crime to undermine the virtue of girls in my then position.” Elizabeth Keckley
Very painful, but the world needs to know. DD
Heartbreaking