Words from the slaves about sexual abuse
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/enslavement/text6/masterslavesexualabuse.pdf
Let me explain to you very plain without prejudice one way or the other, I have had many opportunities,
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.
Women ⎯ white women, I mean ⎯ are IDOLS at the south, not WIVES, for the slave women are
preferred in many instances; and if these idols but nod or lift a finger, woe to the poor victim: kicks, cuffs,
and stripes are sure to follow. Masters are frequently compelled to sell this class of their slaves out of
deference to the feelings of their white wives; and shocking and scandalous as it may seem for a man to
sell his own blood to the traffickers in human flesh, it is often an act of humanity toward the slave-child to
be thus removed from his merciless tormentors.
I done seen Mack Williams kill folks an’ I done seen ’im have folks killed. One
day he tol’ me dat if my wife had been good lookin’, I never would sleep wid her agin ’cause he’d kill me
an’ take her an’ raise chilluns off’n her. Dey uster [used to] take women away fum dere husbands an’ put
wid some other man to breed jes’ like dey would do cattle. Dey always kept a man penned up an’ dey
used ’im like a stud hoss.
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’.
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.
I knew a man at the South who had six children by a colored slave. Then there was a fuss between
him and his wife, and he sold all the children but the oldest slave daughter. Afterward, he had a child
by this daughter, and sold mother and child before the birth. This was nearly forty years ago. Such things
are done frequently in the South.
Yet Patsey wept
oftener and suffered more than any of her companions. She had been literally excoriated. Her back bore
the scars of a thousand stripes ⎯ not because she was backward in her work, nor because she was of an
unmindful and rebellious spirit, but because it had fallen to her lot to be the slave of a licentious master
and a jealous mistress. She shrank before the lustful eye of the one, and was in danger even of her life at
the hands of the other, and between the two she was indeed accursed.
In the great house, for days together, there were high and angry words, poutings and estrangement,
whereof she was the innocent cause. Nothing delighted the mistress so much as to see her suffer, and
more than once, when Epps had refused to sell her, has she tempted me with bribes to put her secretly to
death and bury her body in some lonely place in the margin of the swamp
appeased this unforgiving spirit if it had been in her power, but not like Joseph, dared she escape from
Master Epps, leaving her garment in his hand. Patsey walked under a cloud. If she uttered a word in
opposition to her master’s will, the lash was resorted to at once to bring her to subjection. If she was not
watchful when about her cabin, or when walking in the yard, a billet of wood or a broken bottle, perhaps,
hurled from her mistress’ hand, would smite her unexpectedly in the face. The enslaved victim of lust and
hate, Patsey had no comfort of her life.
As soon as my father’s wife heard of my birth, she
sent one of my mother’s sisters to see whether I was white or black, and when my aunt had seen me, she
returned back as soon as she could and told her mistress that I was white and resembled Mr. Roper very
much. Mr. Roper’s wife not being pleased with this report, she got a large club-stick and knife, and
hastened to the place in which my mother was confined. She went into my mother’s room with a full
intention to murder me with her knife and club, but as she was going to stick the knife into me, my
grandmother happening to come in, caught the knife and saved my life. But as well as I can recollect from
what my mother told me, my father sold her and myself soon after her confinement [period of seclusion
after childbirth].
I was regarded as fair-looking for one of my race, and for four years a white man ⎯ I spare the world
his name ⎯ had base designs upon me. I do not care to dwell upon this subject, for it is one that is
fraught with pain. Suffice it to say that he persecuted me for four years, and I⎯ I⎯ became a mother.
The child of which he was the father was the only child that I ever brought into the world. If my poor boy
ever suffered any humiliating pangs on account of birth, he could not blame his mother, for God knows
that she did not wish to give him life. He must blame the edicts of that society which deemed it no crime
to undermine the virtue of girls in my then position
But where could I turn for protection?
No matter whether the slave girl be as black as ebony or as fair as her mistress. In either case, there is no
shadow of law to protect her from insult, from violence, or even from death; all these are inflicted by
fiends who bear the shape of men. The mistress, who ought to protect the helpless victim, has no other
feelings towards her but those of jealousy and rage. The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out
of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe. . . .
Southern women often marry a man knowing that he is the father of many little slaves. They do not
trouble themselves about it. They regard such children as property, as marketable as the pigs on the
plantation, and it is seldom that they do not make them aware of this by passing them into the slavetrader’s
hands as soon as possible, and thus getting them out of their sight.
I have
myself seen the master of such a household whose head was bowed down in shame, for it was known in
the neighborhood that his daughter had selected one of the meanest slaves on his plantation to be the
father of his first grandchild. She did not make her advances to her equals nor even to her father’s more
intelligent servants. She selected the most brutalized, over whom her authority could be exercised with
less fear of exposure. Her father, half frantic with rage, sought to revenge himself on the offending black
man, but his daughter, foreseeing the storm that would arise, had given him free papers and sent him out
of the state.
In such cases the infant is smothered or sent where it is never seen by any who know its history. But
if the white parent is the father, instead of the mother, the offspring are unblushingly reared for the
market. If they are girls, I have indicated plainly enough what will be their inevitable destiny.
You may believe what I say, for I write only that whereof I know. I was twenty-one years
