Female African-American Women During The Slavery Era

Female African-American slaves were required to bear many children before they were 20 . Though Infants birthed by slaves had a 28-50% mortality rate, this was a common practice in the south. During the slavery era, female African-American slaves lost their humanity; They were sexually abused and had their families broken apart, hindering their ability to recover after their freedom.
Body 1: Harriet Jacobs once said, “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women,” And she could not be more right. What people do not realize is, although female African-American slaves experienced the same tortures as Male slaves They were beaten and tortured on the same level as male slave but unlike them, it was a common practice to be
Most of these women had children with their masters although the masters would never acknowledge the fact that those children (Sally hemings) were from their own amorous mistake. Plantation owners were not the only problem Female slaves had to deal with, they also had to face the wrath of their rapists’ wives. The slavery era was very misogynistic, white women could not show any emotion other than love towards their husbands. This resulted to more hate towards female slaves because, when their masters would rape them, their wives were extremely jealous that their husbands preferred a lowly slave over them. In turn, they took out their anger on the slaves, although they never consented to have sex with a master. Due to all of this, white women made female slaves’ lives harder than they should’ve been. White men who raped their slaves never felt an ounce of regret of what they had done due to the fact that they felt as if they were saving the women from having to have sex with male slaves who were seen as animalistic and uncivilized(Atlanta black star). Most slave women were raped but, there was a sub group of slaves
Most female African slaves lost their husbands, fathers, maybe even brothers during the civil war as, slave drew arms to fight Confederate soldiers because they wanted to be free. The Civil War brought on the emancipation proclamation which freed 3.1 million out of 4 million slaves in America. When slaves became free, many slaves just started new famines after the war but some, held onto the memories of the past and were determined to relive those memories. In the year of 1866 , Many Free slaves started to place ads in Newspapers looking for family members they could reunite with. Slaves also were able to get help from the government at the time by using the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau was a bill that was passed by Abraham Lincoln to help aids slaves in the south. It was intended to only last one year, and helped in the provision of food, clothing, and shelter to newly freed slaves. The government did not do this however due to lack of funding and opposition in their own ranks to help slaves. Due to this factor, many slaves died from starvation and Diseases between the year of 1862-1870. “The largest biological crisis of the 19th century,” Yet due to the fact that this happened to slaves instead of their Caucasian counterparts, this is not a fact widely known. The first couple years following the