African American Female Slaves

The African-American people have suffered great hardships since slavery. During the 15 and 19th century many Africans were taken and forced into slavery. Some slaves

“State laws made him liable to arrest, fine, and imprisonment for charges of contract of fraud, vagrancy, and other allegations” (Deborah, et al. 475). In other words, this was a complex system in which a black man would arrested for not working. He was ordered to pay a fine that he could not afford to pay and incarcerate. A third party, usually plantation owner, would pay his fine and hire him until he could pay off the fine himself. However, the peonage would force to work for the debtor as long as possible. To keep peonage working long, the debtors/ owners usually cheated peonage and forced them into a pattern of cyclical debt. Although the amount of money which peonage owned the owners was not big, but it always grew larger instead of smaller years after years. If he ran away, he could be chased and killed. In reality, the labor contracts were difficult to break for most peonage couldn’t read or write. Therefore, those contracts were favored the owner’s interests. As a result, peonage are forced to stay against their will,

The document, “Harriet Jacobs Deplores Her Risks in Being a Female Slave, 1861,” describes how female slaves during her time period felt towards slavery and how it was like to grow up as a slave. According to Harriet Jacobs’ document, she started off as an innocent child, unaware of what happens around her and how harsh slavery actually can be. This changes as she grows up and her life becomes more and more miserable due to her status as a slave. By the time Jacobs reaches fifteen and starts to enter adulthood, her master would continuously harass her in numerous ways treating her as property. Being a slave, she had no way of defending herself from how she was treated and no means of running away from her master. Even when she feels hatred

Even though the african americans were completely freed from slavery, they still had to face many hardships such as inequality. An example of this appears in a labor contract from 1886 when it mainly discusses the chores and tasks of a black man while

Transitioning from slavery to free-labor created new issues to arise between African Americans and white Southerners. It was believed that if no longer slaves, African Americans still must work. Henry Adams, an African American observing planters, wrote that, “white men would drive colored women out in the fields to work…and would tell colored men that their wives and children could not live on their places unless they worked in the fields.”10 In the same line of thinking, M. C. Fulton requests that freedwomen be required to work, stating that it is impossible for one man to provide for his family while his wife is in “idleness,” without stealing.11 What Adams observed and what Fulton complained about shows two different reasons for pushing freedwomen to work, in a way that, presumably, was different than what was expected of white women. The free-labor system caused disputes in what qualified as “work.” White employers claimed that, “the labor of the employee belongs to him for the whole year, that he must labor for him six days during the week and do all kinds of work required of him wether directly connected with the crop.”12 Freedmen, however, claimed that they had “no other work to do but to cultivate and gather the crop.”13 White employers did not seem to view African American laborers as employees, rather they saw them as slaves with contracts, able to submit complaints about their employment

Once African American’s were freed they faced many social obstacles. Blacks wanted to immediately be given the same treatment to whites in the workforce, such as have one day off per week so they could have more free time with their families. Blacks had more than the right to request time off, but some whites in American thought that this request was unreasonable, mostly because white people now lacked the ability to exploit black labor (Ransom221). After slavery ended the South was in short supply for

The study of African American workers is incredibly interesting and complex. There are many themes and events that are conveyed through the history of black workers. Although the list is endless, there are a few cases and themes that should be highlighted. First, the theme of oppression is conveyed through the practice of sharecropping. Second, the theme of unity is displayed in the Memphis Sanitation Strike. Third, the theme of struggle is highlighted during the urban job crisis that is happening in the United States. Fourth, the theme of development is conveyed through improvements in education for black workers. All of these themes and topics are emitted through the history of black workers and can be utilized in an effort to improve the labor market experiences of black

As a student of United States history, I have learned new information concerning certain subject matters. My prior knowledge of US history about these certain topics, such as, indentured servants and the institution of slavery was minimal. The reason for this is most of my prior knowledge of these important topics were forgotten. The question I always asked myself what was the difference between indentured servants and African slaves? Through my personal studying on the subject matter, I have discovered new information that clarified all my misconceptions about historical topics like, indentured servants from Europe, African slavery, and finding the similarities and differences of these two types of labor.

Manumission was one of the many hopes that African American slaves had during the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Manumission was not only a way to freedom for slaves, but also a way for many slaveholders to rid, of their older slaves who were no longer useful. To say that manumission was agreed upon all states and slave-owners would be an understatement. Not all states or slave-owners thought of manumission as being a good or equal trade for a slave’s duty of work. To many slave owners manumission was disfavored, but to many, including the slaves, manumission was an act of an individual doing what is right and just for another human being, for this many favored manumission.

“He told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in every thing; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his…” The treatment of slaves varied in their personal experiences as well as in the experiences of others they knew, but Harriet Jacobs phenomenally described the dynamics of the relationship between many female slaves and their superiors with these words from her personal narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861). Before slavery was outlawed it was not uncommon for young female slaves to be sexually abused and exploited by their masters. Although many people know about the cruelty of the sexual assaults that made too many young girls victims of rape in the Antebellum South, most people are unaware of the complexity of the issue and how many different ways these women were abused.

Economic disparity and abject poverty suffered by African Americans during the reconstruction, the realty was “free people surrounded by many hostile whites”. One freedman, Houston Hartsfield Holloway, wrote, "For we colored people did not know how to be free and the white people did not know how to have a free colored person about them." (http://www.memory.loc.gov/ammem/aaohtml/exhibit/aopart5.html)

During the war of Independence, the slaves of African descent were led in many different directions. British was promising to free them and were not fulfilling their end of the deal, “British was recognized as independent, yet they kept the salve-owning exclusive.” (Chasteen, 111); while in other places the slaves were being freed. In Brazil the emperor Pedro 11 freed his own slaves. Slaves of the African descent were said to know much more than other slaves, such as; they knew how to work with iron, they knew how to care and tend to farmlands and animals, overall, they had a lot of experience that they brought with them. Because of their worth the slave owners did not want give them up. Some of the slaves were even taught how to read and write,

In the mid seventeenth century, Europeans settled in North America. They turned Africans they stole into slaves as a less expensive, more ample work source than the contracted hirelings. After 1619, when a Dutch ship conveyed 20 Africans to Jamestown, Virginian, servitude spread all through the American provinces. In the seventeenth and eighteenth hundreds of years, dark slaves worked chiefly on the tobacco, rice and indigo estates of the southern drift. After the American Revolution (1775-1783), numerous homesteaders started to connect the abuse of black slaves to their own particular persecution by the British, and to require subjugation 's annulment.

The origin of slavery was not caused because of racism. As rice cultivation expanded in the South, movement of white indentured servants was declining due to the harsh conditions. Moreover, white landowners began to feel unsure about their dependence on white workers because of the scarcity of labor in the South. The importation of African slaves was a response to a growing demand for labor. Thus, slavery was the desire for white landowners to find a useful, stable workforce. Racism was created to justify the treatment of Africans and the nature of the slavery in America. Many historians and scholars had distinct points of views, but slavery was more likely begun because of economic and social causes.

When the first slaves were taken from their homes in Africa and placed onto the ships to bring them to wherever they were destined, their freedom was taken away. One of the reasons that people were okay with this situation was because they viewed Black people as an inferior race. The slave codes stated, “Slaves were not considered men. They had no right to petition. They were ‘devisable like any other chattel.’… The slave owed to his master and all his family a respect ‘without bounds, and an absolute obedience.’” (Du Bois, 10). W.E.B. Du Bois asserts that the slaves were seen as less than human. The slave owners and other White people saw slaves as animals ready to be sold off against their will. Slaves did not have the same rights as normal people, such as their own freedom. This view of slaves made it difficult for slaves to obtain their freedom, because people at the time saw Black people as property rather than human beings. Even after emancipation, Black people still experienced issues regarding their freedom. Although the Emancipation Proclamation granted Black Americans their freedom in 1863, they were not truly “free”. Billie Holiday sings in her song “Strange Fruit” that “ Southern trees bear a strange fruit/ Blood on the leaves and blood at the root/ Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze/ Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees” (Holiday, 1939). In this song, Billie Holiday informs the listeners of the lynching that Black people experienced after the