The History Of Slavery

As Dana soon discovers, the reality of slavery is even more disturbing than its portrayal in books, movies, and television programs. Before her journey into the past, Dana called the temp agency where she worked a "slave market," even though "the people who ran it couldn't have cared less whether or not you showed up to do the work they offered."

The understanding of the life of a slave woman is far beyond the knowledge of you or I, unless you have actually been an enslaved woman. These literary elements depicting the passage from this story are the only

The slave owner’s exploitation of the black woman’s sexuality was one of the most significant factors differentiating the experience of slavery for males and females. The white man’s claim to the slave body, male as well as female, was inherent in the concept of the Slave Trade and was tangibly realized perhaps no where more than the auction block. Captive Africans were stripped of their clothing, oiled down, and poked and prodded by potential buyers. The erotic undertones of such scenes were particularly pronounced in the case of black women. Throughout the period of slavery in America, white society believed black women to be innately lustful beings. The perception of the African woman as hyper-sexual made her both the object of white man’s abhorrence and his fantasy. Within the bonds of slavery, masters often felt it was their right to engage in sexual activity with black women. Sometimes, female slaves made advances hoping that such relationships would increase the chances that they or their children would be liberated by the master. Most of the time, slave owners took slaves by force.

Ophelia Settle Egypt, informally known as Ophie, was an African American woman ahead of her time. She attained the educational status of less than one percent of the American population, was liberal and accepting of others despite the criticism around her, fought to end racism, worked independently of her husband, and believed in limiting family growth. All of Egypt’s beliefs and lifetime achievements represent a new type of woman: a woman who refuses to assimilate to her gender stereotype of weak, inferior, and domestic. Egypt dedicated her life to social work through various activities. She worked as a sociologist, researcher, teacher, director of organizations, and social worker at different times in her life. Egypt’s book, The Unwritten History of Slavery (1968), and the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Southeast Washington D.C. named after her represent Egypt’s legacy and how one person is capable of social change.

Soul by Soul by Walter Johnson centers on the internal slave business in New Orleans as well as the slave market as a place of portrayal and oblique connotations built around the commoditization of the physique of slaves .A significant interest in Soul by Soul relates to the slave pen, where slave bodies as commodities determined the identities of black and white persons. Slave transactions were typically about show and filled with meaning-making, which was itself characterized by cost and worth. The paternalism ideology employed the black persons’ physique and slave transactions to imply that white persons were assisting powerless black people in the slave markets. In essence, the ideology suggests that, contrary to common perceptions, white persons were not separating slave families .The slave market history discussed in Soul by Soul relates to that of the antebellum in the South where slave trade was basically about purchases and sales. Those who owned slaves were consumers in the marketplace. Consumer way of life had structured individual identities. Slave bodies were regarded as items to be rated and assessed and were usually the subject of discussions. Every slave was given a made-up and decorated past. The market culture of slavery in that era was based on fantasy just like the ideology of paternalism. Succinctly, the slave market stimulated the self-definition of white persons from the South.

White explores the master’s sexual exploitation of their female slaves, and proves this method of oppression to be the defining factor of what sets the female slaves apart from their male counterparts. Citing former slaves White writes, “Christopher Nichols, an escaped slave living in Canada, remembered how his master laid a woman on a bench, threw her clothes over her head, and whipped her. The whipping of a thirteen-year-old Georgia slave girl also had sexual overtones. The girl was put on all fours ‘sometimes her head down, and sometimes up’ and beaten until froth ran from her mouth (33).” The girl’s forced bodily position as well as her total helplessness to stop her master’s torture blatantly reveals the forced sexual trauma many African females endured.

Johnson’s focus is on the New Orleans market, the largest in the South, whose operation he documents in detail. His most important evidence are court records arising out of exhibition laws that governed the circumstances under which a buyer could return his human merchandise if the seller had either misrepresented or failed to disclose critical aspects of the health or character of the slave. Here he makes a major contribution to our knowledge of the mechanics of buying and selling people, Johnson’s Ideas that slave buyers and sellers brought into the market in slaves from the decision to sell a slave to the final accounting when that slave began to work for a new owner. Each chapter details the complex negotiations among sellers, buyers, and slaves every step of the way, negotiations not only over price and value, but over the meaning of slavery

“’Why-but you were married to me, by the minister, as much as if you’d been a white man!’ said Eliza, simply. ‘Don’t you know a slave can’t be married? There is no law in this country for that; I can’t hold you for my wife, if he chooses to part us” (22).

The relationship between a female slave and her master wasn’t always a relationship built only on hard work in the fields or serving in the home. In some instances slave women were forced to comply with sexual advances by their masters regularly. Attempting to resist these advances often led to undesirable consequences that often included beatings and other forms of physical punishment. Because of these harsh and brutal consequences

Beginning when Englishmen traveled to Africa in order to purchase slaves, black women were perceived to be individuals who were exceptionally sensual. In fact, “One of the most prevalent images of black women in antebellum America was of a person governed almost entirely by her libido, a Jezebel character” (p. 28-29). Further, the sexual activities of these women often became topics of public conversation and thus, one of the most personal aspects of black women’s lives would no longer remain sacred. To further illustrate the inappropriate nature regarding the interpretation of bonded women during the antebellum period, Gray White details: women’s naked bodies were frequently exposed during whippings, inappropriately uncovered and even fondled during auctions, and the clothes they were forced to wear in order to perform assigned tasks were viewed as promiscuous (p. 33). Because these women were viewed as carnal objects, white masters often

In the excerpt regarding prostitution in Victorian London, the prostitute that was interviewed was poor and was “forced to go to the streets for a living.” (Spielvogel 698) Prostitutes like her often had to get money through theft or prostitution or else they will be beaten by their caretakers. Before she became a prostitute, she lost both of her parents and was sent to work in another family’s house as a maid. Her mistress treated her cruelly, and she ran away after enduring her treatment for 6 months. It seemed that not everyone got a taste of Victorian prosperity.

Sex slavery didn’t stop, as we might think, between male owners versus women slaves, nevertheless, it was widely common among women owners versus male slaves too. Women and their positions were considered minor and subservient. Dominated by their husbands, white women shared semi-mutual feeling with black women slaves. To suite themselves, accompanied with some sense of power and control away from controlling and submissive husbands, white mistress took

There was a small lamp stand beside his bed on the right which was not present. "Is this even my house?", he asked himself and proceeded to lean forward in which both arms brushed against something warm and breathing. Tensing up, he slowly looked down in anticipation of some type of animal. When finally looking all the way down he heaved a huge sigh of relief. Girls, a multitude of them surrounded him. All in different positions but all naked.

The growth of prostitution started with slave trade and the disrespect African-American women had to continuously deal with. Being a slave was bad enough already, but to be sold and traded for sex became a moneymaker for slave traders like Isaac Franklin. The nature in which Franklin’s business of slave trading thrived was the fetish American men had for light-skinned Negro women. These light-skinned African American women, became known as “fancy maids” to many white men, because they symbolized a

A woman could not escape commodification even if she didn’t enter this particular market – matrimony and the nunnery were also means of buying and selling of women’s ‘wares’. The hymen itself was a commodity, as