Child-bearing
amongst slaves started around the age of thirteen, and by twenty the
women would be expected to have four or five children. To encourage
child-bearing some population owners
promised women slaves their freedom after they had produced fifteen
children.
The fathers of these children were sometimes the slave-owner or his
white friends. As slaves were the property of the plantation
owner, the rape of a black woman by whites was not considered
a crime. First-generation children of mixed race were called mulattoes.
Some of the most important slave narratives were written by mulattoes.
This included Frederick Douglass, Harriet
Jacobs, Moses Roper, Lewis
Clarke and William Wells Brown.
(1)
Francis
Fredric, Fifty Years of Slavery (1863)
Even
his own child, by a black woman or a mulatto, when the child is called
a quadroon, and is very often as white as any English child, is frequently
sold to degradation. There are thousands upon thousands of mulattoes
and quadroons, all children of slaveholders, in a state of slavery.
Slavery is bad enough for the black, but it is worse, if worse can
be, for the mulatto or the quadroon to be subjected to the utmost
degradation and hardship, and to know that it is their own fathers
who are treating them as brutes, especially when they contrast their
usage with the pampered luxury in which they see his lawful children
revel, who are not whiter, and very often not so good-looking as the
quadroon.
(2)
Moses Roper, Adventures and Escape
of Moses Roper (1838)
A
few months before I was born, my father married my mother's young
mistress. As soon as my father's wife heard of my birth, she sent
one of my mother's sisters to see whether I was white or black, and
when my aunt had seen me, she returned back as soon as she could,
and told her mistress that I was white, and resembled Mr. Roper very
much. Mr. Roper's wife being not pleased with this report, she got
a large club stick and knife, and hastened to the place in which my
mother was confined. She went into my mother's room with full intention
to murder me with her knife and club, but as she was going to stick
the knife into me, my grandmother happening to come in, caught the
knife and saved my life. But as well as I can recollect from what
my mother told me, my father sold her and myself soon after her confinement.
(3)
Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life
of a Slave Girl (1861)
My master was, to my knowledge, the father of eleven slaves. But did
the mothers dare to tell who was the father of their children? Did
the other slaves dare to allude to it, except in whispers among themselves?
No, indeed! They knew too well the terrible consequences.
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of
many little slaves. They do not trouble themselves about it. They
regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the
plantation; and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this
by passing them into the slave-trader's hands as soon as possible,
and thus getting them out of their sight.
Some poor creatures have been so brutalized by the lash that they
will sneak out of the way to give their masters free access to their
wives and daughters. Do you think this proves the black man to belong
to an inferior order of beings? What would you be, if you had been
born and brought up a slave, with generations of slaves for ancestors?
I admit that the black man is inferior. But what is it that makes
him so? It is the ignorance in which white men compel him to live;
it is the torturing whip that lashes manhood out of him; it is the
fierce bloodhounds of the South, and the scarcely less cruel human
bloodhounds of the north, who enforce the Fugitive Slave Law. They
do the work.
(4)
Elizabeth
Keckley, Thirty Years a Slave (1868)
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.
(5)
William Wells Brown, Narrative of
William W. Brown, A Fugitive Slave (1847)
I was born in Lexington, Kentucky. The man who stole me as soon as
I was born, recorded the births of all the infants which he claimed
to be born his property, in a book which he kept for that purpose.
My mother's name was Elizabeth. She had seven children, Solomon, Leander,
Benjamin, Joseph, Millford, Elizabeth, and myself. No two of us were
children of the same father. My father's name, as I learned from my
mother, was George Higgins. He was a white man, a relative of my master,
and connected with some of the first families in Kentucky.
(6)
Frederick Douglass, Narrative of
the Life of Frederick Douglass (1845)
My mother was named Harriet Bailey. She was the daughter of Isaac
and Betsey Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of
a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather. My
father was a white man. He was admitted to be such by all I ever heard
speak of my parentage. The opinion was also whispered that my master
was my father; but of the correctness of this opinion, I know nothing;
the means of knowing was withheld from me.
(7)
Harriet
Jacobs, Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of
a slave girl. My master, Dr. Flint, began to whisper foul words in
my ear. Young as I was, I could not remain ignorant of their import.
I tried to treat them with indifference or contempt. The master's
age, my extreme youth, and the fear that his conduct would be reported
to my grandmother, made him bear this treatment for many months. He
was a crafty man, and resorted to many means to accomplish his purposes.
Sometimes he had stormy, terrific ways, that made his victims tremble;
sometimes he assumed a gentleness that he thought must surely subdue.
Of the two, I preferred his stormy moods, although they left me trembling.
He tried his utmost to corrupt the pure principles my grandmother
had instilled. He peopled my young mind with unclean images, such
as only a vile monster could think of. I turned from him with disgust
and hatred. But he was my master. 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 commandments of nature. He told me I was
his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things. My
soul revolted against the mean tyranny. But where could I turn for
protection? No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony
or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no shadow of
law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death;
all these are inflicted by fiends who bear the shape of men.
The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other
feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. Even
the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her
children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that
her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves. Perhaps the
child's own mother is among those hated ones. She listens to violent
outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is
the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon
she will learn to tremble when she hears her master's footfall. She
will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God
has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That
which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation
of the female slave. I know that some are too much brutalized by slavery
to feel the humiliation of their position; but many slaves feel it
most acutely, and shrink from the memory of it. I cannot tell how
much I suffered in the presence of these wrongs, nor how I am still
pained by the retrospect.
My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him,
and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit
to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air, after a day of unwearied
toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother's grave, his
dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had
given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The other slaves in my
master's house noticed the change. Many of them pitied me; but none
dared to ask the cause. They had no need to inquire. They knew too
well the guilty practices under that roof; and they were aware that
to speak of them was an offence that never went unpunished.
I longed for some one to confide in. I would have given the world
to have laid my head on my grandmother's faithful bosom, and told
her all my troubles. But Dr. Flint swore he would kill me, if I was
not as silent as the grave. Then, although my grandmother was all
in all to me, I feared her as well as loved her. I had been accustomed
to look up to her with a respect bordering upon awe. I was very young,
and felt shamefaced about telling her such impure things, especially
as I knew her to be very strict on such subjects.
(8)
Harriet
Jacobs, Incidents
in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861)
I had entered my sixteenth year, and every day it became more apparent
that my presence was intolerable to Mrs. Flint. Angry words frequently
passed between her and her husband. He had never punished me himself,
and he would not allow any body else to punish me. In that respect,
she was never satisfied; but, in her angry moods, no terms were too
vile for her to bestow upon me. Yet I, whom she detested so bitterly,
had far more pity for her than he had, whose duty it was to make her
life happy. I never wronged her, or wished to wrong her; and one word
of kindness from her would have brought me to her feet.
After repeated quarrels between the doctor
and his wife, he announced his intention to take his youngest daughter,
then four years old, to sleep in his apartment. It was necessary that
a servant should sleep in the same room, to be on hand if the child
stirred. I was selected for that office, and informed for what purpose
that arrangement had been made.
(9)
Henry
Bibb, The Life and Adventures of an American Slave (1851)
A
poor slave's wife can never be true to her husband contrary to the
will of her master. She can neither be pure nor virtuous, contrary
to the will of her master. She dare not refuse to be reduced to a
state of adultery at the will of her master.
(10)
Ida
Wells, Crusade for
Justice (1928)
All my life I had known that such conditions were accepted as a matter
of course. I found that this rape of helpless Negro girls and women,
which began in slavery days, still continued without let or hindrance,
check or reproof from the church, state, or press until there had
been created this race within a race - and all designated by the inclusive
term of "colored".
I also found that what the white man of the South practiced as all
right for himself, he assumed to be unthinkable in white women. They
could and did fall in love with the pretty mulatto and quadroon girls
as well as black ones, but they professed an inability to imagine
white women doing the same thing with Negro and mulatto men. Whenever
they did so and were found out, the cry of rape was raised, and the
lowest element of the white South was turned loose to wreak its fiendish
cruelty on those too weak to help themselves.
No torture of helpless victims by heathen savages or cruel red Indians
ever exceeded the cold-blooded savagery of white devils under lynch
law. This was done by white men who controlled all the forces of law
and order in their communities and who could have legally punished
rapists and murderers, especially black men who had neither political
power nor financial strength with which to evade any justly deserved
fate. The more I studied the situation, the more I was convinced that
the Southerner had never gotten over his resentment that the Negro
was no longer his plaything, his servant, and his source of income.
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