I ’member he had a real pretty gal on his place. . . One of the overseers was crazy about her, but her mother had told her not to let any of ’em go with her. So this old overseer would stick clo…se ’round her when they was workin’, just so he could get a chance to say somethin’ to her. He kept followin’ this child and followin’ this child until she almost went crazy. Way afterwhile she run away and come to our house and and stayed ’bout three days. When my marster found out she was there, he told her she would have to go back, or at least she would have to leave his place. He didn’t want no trouble with nobody. When that child left us she stayed in the woods until she got so hungry she just had to go back. This old man was mad with her for leavin’, and one day while she was in the field he started at her again and she told him flat footed she warn’t goin’ with him he took the big end of his cow hide and struck her in the back so hard it knocked her plumb crazy. It was a big lake of water about ten yards in front of ’em, and if her mother hadn’t run and caught her she would have walked right in it and drowned.
In them times white men went with colored gals and women bold[ly]. Any time they saw one and wanted her, she had to go with him, and his wife didn’t say nothin’ ’bout it. Not only the men, but the women went with colored men too. That’s why so many women slave owners wouldn’t marry, ’cause they was goin’ with one of their slaves. These things that’s goin’ on now ain’t new, they been happenin’. That’s why I say you just as well leave ’em alone ’cause they gwine [going] to do what they want to anyhow. . . .
. . Now sometimes, if you was a real pretty young gal, somebody would buy you without knowin’ anythin’ ’bout you, just for yourself. Before my old marster died, he had a pretty gal he was goin’ with and he wouldn’t let her work nowhere but in the house, and his wife nor nobody else didn’t say nothin’ ’bout it; they knowed better. She had three chillun for him and when he died his brother come and got the gal and the chillun.
One white lady that lived near us at McBean slipped in a colored gal’s room and cut her baby’s head clean off ’cause it belonged to her husband. He beat her ’bout it and started to kill her, but she begged so I reckon he got to feelin’ sorry for her. But he kept goin’ with the colored gal and they had more chillun.
Unnamed former slave, enslaved in Georgia, interviewed ca. 1937
this is our history. this needs to be known. this needs to be shared. thank you for bringing this history lesson to us.
There was a doctor in the neighborhood who bought a girl and installed her on the place for his own use, his wife hearing it severely beat her. One day her little child was playing in the yard. It fell head down in a post hole filled with water and drowned. His wife left him; afterward she said it was an affliction put on her husband for his sins.
Let me explain to you very plain without prejudice one way or the other, I have had many opportuni-ties, a chance to watch white men and women in my long career, colored women have many hard battles to fight to protect themselves from assault by employers, white male servants or by white men, many times not being able to protect [themselves], in fear of losing their positions. Then on the other hand they were subjected to many impositions by the women of the household through woman’s jealousy.
RICHARD MACKS, enslaved in Maryland, interviewed 1937 [WPA Slave Narrative Project]
My master often went to the house, got drunk, and then came out to the field to whip, cut, slash, curse, swear, beat and knock down several, for the smallest offense, or nothing at all.
He divested a poor female slave of all wearing apparel, tied her down to stakes, and whipped her with a handsaw until he broke it over her naked body. In process of time he ravished her person and became the father of a child by her. Besides, he always kept a colored Miss in the house with him. This is another curse of Slavery ⎯ concubinage and illegitimate connections ⎯ which is carried on to an alarming extent in the far South. A poor slave man who lives close by his wife is permitted to visit her but very seldom, and other men, both white and colored, cohabit with her. It is undoubtedly the worst place of incest and bigamy in the world. A white man thinks nothing of putting a colored man out to carry the fore row [front row in field work] and carry on the same sport with the colored man’s wife at the same time.
I know these facts will seem too awful to relate, but I am constrained to write of such revolting deeds, as they are some of the real “dark deeds of American Slavery.” Then, kind reader, pursue my narrative, remembering that I give no fiction in my details of horrid scenes. Nay, believe, with me, that the half can never be told of the misery the poor slaves are still suffering in this so-called land of freedom.
WILLIAM J. ANDERSON, Life and Narrative of William J. Anderson, Twenty-Four Years a Slave, 1857
You know what I am tired of?
I am tired of Whites calling out the White racists, but doing NOTHING more than that. It is not enough to say how savage the White slaveholders were; it is not enough to call out the racists.
Well-intentioned, non racist Whites need to roll up their sleeves and repair ALL of the damage from the past that is still present today.
Yahtc
The hate is so toxic and with some it’s a way of life. All they know is hate. I have no answer for what it will take. Maybe some will just have to die off.
Damn! She cut the baby’s head off!!!
What you saw happen to Patsy in “12 Years A Slave” is nothing but raw ugly truth. The rapes, the abuse from both master & miss Ann…nothing but truth!
Yes indeed, and that is why some folks don’t want to see “12 Years a Slave.” They can’t fathom the notion of how barbaric and inhuman some white folks were and still are.
And Miss Ann was just as cruel, because the fact that her husband would want to rape a black slave. Although these women didn’t look at it as rape
Although these women didn’t look at it as rape
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**BOOM*! And there you have it!
Miss Ann and nem thought their hubbies were lusting after the black women and didn’t find them desirable. They were INSANELY jealous just like a wife is after finding out her hubbie was having an extra-marital affair. Can you imagine these foolish women thinking their husbands were having affairs with black slave women.
HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! IT WAS BRUTAL RAPE
Bring the truth! Here’s this…the white men brain washed their wives into believing black women were throwing themselves on them and that they were loose women. It’s been passed down for generations and folks still believe that ISH to this day. Black women dark, loose, alluring. White women pure and decent. They brain washed the women by pretending to be the victim & therefore continue their evil deeds.
The White wives revealed their depraved, cruel hearts by not recognizing the humanity of the Black slaves who were indeed raped. These White women were cruel, vicious, and cold…..their southern (or any state) etiquette is EQUAL to the white hoods and gowns that hid the identities of villainous criminals.
One Professor taught the women back then would talk about every home that had a mulatto child and who was the father but acted as if they didn’t see the mulatto children sitting at their own table. They acted as if the children dropped from the sky. Good grief!
This is who those wives of the slaveholders really were when you stripped them of their masks of etiquette, hospitality and lady-like dressing:
http://www.elfwood.com/art/f/e/fenyofater//E_Fraps2rajzoksketchgonosz_szajgonosz_szaj.jpg
Wow. So deep and interesting. This subject is never boring because it went on a lot more than people care to admit….especially white people. Especially the white women with black men.
Hi Vitamin!
This Series! Whoa!
But the story must be told. All of it!
Agreed! Now, to me, these sorts of things are harder for more white people-especially white women-to admit or care to admit and understand. White men knew it and did what they wanted to do and what they could get away with. Now there were and are decent people in all colors and races however some people back then were all about their lusts and desires.
In this series, it is told beauty was the curse for the black woman. She suffered monumental sufferings from all sides for being beautiful. And there was no one to protect her. It’s so heartbreaking.
This is why I am so glad that more men are stepping up to protect their daughters. To teach them what to look for in a good man and to appreciate who they are and not be ashamed of being beautiful. That goes for mothers too. Nothing wrong with beauty and intelligence.
Vitamin
I had a great aunt who was ashamed of how she looked. She wore a bonnet and was covered from head to toe, cotton stockings and all…nothing out but her white hands. We always wondered why she dressed like that? She kept to herself and loved to sit in a room with dim light. OMG! How miserable.
Wow! just because she was pretty?
And white. Ashamed of how she looked. Poor Auntie!
Do you think colorism is as much of an issue nowdays? I had/have relatives that were very fair too. But I don’t recall stories of them being ashamed. Wow. Then I think of Lupita Nyongo ( may have misspelled that last name). She is brown and sooooo beautiful and very confident. Do you think it is/was that times?
I think it was the times and her personality. She was a quiet woman & shy. Probably thought people would stare. Folks didn’t care but she didn’t know that. The black people I know have always accepted mixed races. And you’d better believe there were many mixed race kin-folk.
That is soooo true. We come in so many shades. Why didn’t she know that they wouldn’t care?
I don’t know. Poor Auntie lived such a miserable life…hiding.
Well bless her. Did she live a long life? Husband? Children?
She did live a long life. Husband but no children.
To this day white men can’t stand the fact that some white women want black men.
They like to project their evil, brutal thoughts on the black male slaves back in the day and even now if any white women with a black man it’s because he forced her into it. Trying to paint him as the brute, the animal, the big, black rapist. Naw naw, naw, Miss Ann lusting after the male is what it was, but she cried RAPE when she was caught.
Myth stated once, white men were so adamantly against black men being with white women but they never expected the white woman to go outside her race for the black man. They didn’t see that coming.
And, wonderful Black young men were falsely accused, convicted, and executed. Miss- Ann-types MURDERED innocent Blacks!
Indeed. She cried rape because otherwise they’d kill her and the black man. They were made examples.
One white lady that lived near us at McBean slipped in a colored gal’s room and cut her baby’s head clean off ’cause it belonged to her husband.
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She cut the baby’s head off?
Black women suffered horrendous abuse from all sides.
Gruesomely BARBARIC.