The hardships of slavery were not easy for anyone whether they were male or female. However, these experiences of hardships differed greatly among black males and females in the south. Male and female slaves had their own ways of dealing with the depression of slavery by passively or actively resisting against their masters. Also, they had different types of work assigned to them usually based on gender and value. Finally, they had different sexual experiences on the plantations. The following paragraphs will further explain these differences in the life experiences of the black male and female slave.…
Slavery is despondent and that's that. Whether a person is black, white, Asian, or otherwise, it is not just to be whipped, beaten, and given extremely hard jobs with no pay, maybe very little. This is how most slaves were treated before 1863, then the Emancipation Proclamation was signed to save many normal human beings.…
to an education or other “privileges” that male slaves had. Because of the different backgrounds,…
Angela Davies starts by pointing out the plight of the black people, and especially black women, at the hands of slavery in the 19th century. With the rise of black people movements and abolishment of slavery, the black women’s working conditions didn’t seem to improve. They were still subjected to bad working conditions if not worse at the hands of the whites. The rise of the white feminists’ movement didn’t improve the plight of African women as they were still viewed as servants (chapter 5). Women were subjected to slavery in the modern times due to their sorry economic…
The quest for freedom came at a loss for most Black Slaves across the world. Most dreamt about it, others tried to go after it. Few truly obtained it. This causes me to think, what is freedom, and what does it mean truly to be free. Webster’s Dictionary defines freedom as “ Independence, Liberty, ease of movement, a right.” If we were to go by this somewhat simple definition, we could say Frederick Douglas and Mary Prince gained freedom. But, the path they both took to get it was far from being the same. Their journeys to freedom posed many different complications, but the major difference in their experiences is because of gender. Black women as a whole have had to deal with many different types of degrading sexist/sexual exploitations. Therefore,…
The hardships of slaves are well known but are often generalized, with the role of women sometimes being lost in the depiction of American social and political history. With the rise of gender studies, a well deserved interest for women as historical actors increased. These selected primary sources give insight on the personal level in the way black women perceived their situation and reacted to challenges. The sources show two very clear distinctions along two different axes. The first one is a spatial difference between the north and the south, and the second one a temporal difference, before and after the Civil War.…
Slavery for the Black woman free or not was a common event even in the north. The Black women had to work in substandard conditions or for substandard pay to keep their families sheltered and fed. In their world they often worked more than one job as servants, cooks, house attendants, maids and the like. Their husbands often experienced difficulties finding work therefore putting the working black relationships, marriages and household in jeopardy. All of this being said it was still far better to a black woman in the north than it was to one in the south.…
Blacks acquired new rights and opportunities, such as equality before the law and the rights to own property, be married, attend schools, enter professions, and learn to read and write. One of the first opportunities the former slaves took advantage of was the chance to educate themselves and their children.…
According to the definition in Webster’s dictionary, slavery is defined as the submission of a person to a dominating influence. Though true, this statement does not come close to portraying the inhumane treatment African Americans were subjected to during this time period, especially as a woman. There were many gender specific differences during the enslavement period and women suffered social inferiority due to gender and race. These two traits automatically imposed a sense of ignorance and weakness to the stereotype of slave women. Being an enslaved black woman meant that your life revolved around what made your master happy. The fact was black women couldn’t worry about aspects…
After becoming freed men and henceforth being promoted to struggling sharecroppers, they found themselves as second class citizens having to fight for the same jobs as the already established poor working white class. During the rise of the textile mill industry in the south, African Americans moved to inward but lived in separate and unequal textile villages. Blacks were not allowed to work within the textile mills and were not allowed to work any of the machines. Black men were given the scrap jobs that only included warehouse labor. Early on, textile mills would not hire black women; therefore their only option was to work for the white families in the white villages, to take care of the household, wash clothes, and take care of the…
During the late Nineteenth century, the United States of America was a war torn nation recently healing from the effects of a civil war. The northern states battled the southern states in what seemed as a never ending bloodshed over the rights and liberties of enslaved African Americans. In the end, blacks were freed from backbreaking slavery and where granted freedom as citizens of the United States of America, and through the 15th amendment were also given the right to vote. But despite the outcome of the American Civil War, there was one group however who metaphorically speaking was still enslaved, and remained enslaved to their fellow man for many years to come. This group was not being discriminated due to the color of their skin, but…
This paper presents the life experience of two African-Americans as slaves during the nineteenth century. Henry Bibb was the author of his own narrative, which he published in 1849 with the assistance of Lucius Matlack. The second source was the narrative of W. L. Bost, a slave from North Carolina. He was interviewed as many other enslaved African-Americans by the members of the Federal Writer’s Project around the 1930s. The purpose of these narratives was to describe to the public what it meant to be slave at that period of time. Both authors recalled the difficult and cruel conditions they faced during their journey as slaves. First, they were sold as merchandises on the market. Bost depicted that both men and women were chained and inappropriately…
Thousands of men travelled the country alone in search of work, hitching rides on trucks or travelling on the railways and sleeping rough if they had to. Farmers especially were forced to do this as they had lost their land and had become migrant workers. Many men (if they were lucky enough to have a job) were forced to work in manual labor or as railway workers, which were seen as “black men’s jobs”. They also blamed women for taking jobs away from men during this time period. Men were desperate for work and itching to provide for their families again. And even if they were working they received very little pay which wasn’t enough to support their families.…
According to antislavery.org, modern slavery is when someone is “forced to work - through mental or physical threat; owned or controlled by an 'employer', usually through mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse; dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought and sold as 'property'; physically constrained or has restrictions placed on his/her freedom of movement.”…
Throughout time, in all places, there is an upper class and a lower class. During the 16th to 19th century in America people came from all over Europe. People from Europe found America as an escape from their life; a new start. Some could not afford to take a boat ride across the Atlantic with their whole family. Because of this, some people became indentured servants. Later on, the South revolutionized America by bringing in black slaves and getting rid of indentured servitude. Slaves generated the economy for the South, but was also the main cause of the civil war. Both slaves and indentured servants were treated badly, however, black slaves were much more expensive and had to work for life, whereas indentured servants worked for a reward.…