Ain't I a Woman

by bell hooks

  Where fruitfulness is the greatest of virtues, barrenness will be regarded as worse than a misfortune, as a crime and the subjects of it will be exposed to every form of privation and affliction. Thus a deficiency, wholly beyond the slave’s power becomes the occasion of inconceivable suffering.

  In this same report, a North Carolina citizen repeated a story told to him by a friend about slave breeding on Carolina plantations.

  One day the owner ordered the women into the barn; he then went in among them, whip in hand, and told them he meant to flog them all to death. They began immediately to cry out, ‘What have I done massa? What have I done?’ He replied, ‘Damn you, I will let you know what you have done; you don’t breed, I have not had a young one from one of you for several months.’”

  Some slave owners devised a system of rewards to induce women to breed. But such rewards were rarely commensurate with services rendered. On some plantations a woman might be given a small pig each time a child was born to her. Women were promised a new dress or a new pair of shoes at the birth of a child. A small monetary sum, from one to five dollars, might be given a slave woman at the birth of her fourth or fifth child. A few slaveowners promised freedom to black women who bore large families. A case appeared before the Virginia courts in 1761 in a dispute over a will that included a provision to free a female slave Jenny if she bore ten live children. Some enslaved women desired pregnancy, for they saw it as a means of obtaining certain advantages, the primary one being a lightening of the work load. Frances Kemble in her Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation in 1838-1839 surmised:

  On the birth of a child certain additions of clothing and an additional weekly ration are bestowed on the family; and these matters small as they may seem, acted as powerful inducements to creatures who have not of the restraining influence activating them which belongs to the parental relation among all other people, whether civilized or savage. Moreover, they have all of them a most distinct and perfect knowledge of their value to their owner as property; and a woman thinks, and not so much amiss that the more frequently she adds to the number of her master’s livestock by bringing new slaves into the world, the more claims she will have upon his consideration and good will.

  Breeding was oppressive to all fertile black slave women. Undernourished, overworked women were rarely in a physical condition that would allow for safe easy childbirth.

  Repeated pregnancies without proper care resulted in numerous miscarriages and death. Frances Kemble gave the following account of the condition of black women on her husband’s plantation, women who considered themselves well off compared to slaves on neighboring plantations:

  Fanny has had six children; all dead but one, she came to beg to have her work in the field lightened.

  Nanny has had three children; two of them are dead. She came to implore that the rule of sending them into the field three weeks after their confinement might be altered.

  Leah, Caesar’s wife, has had six children; three are dead.

  Sophy, Lewis’s wife, came to beg for some old line. She is suffering fearfully; has had ten children; five of them all dead. The principal favor she asked was a piece of meat, which I gave her.

  Sally, Scipio’s wife, has had two miscarriages and three children born, one of whom is dead. She came complaining of incessant pain and weakness in her back. This woman was a mullatto daughter of a slave called Sophy, by a white man of the name of Walker who visited the plantation.

  Charlotte, Renty’s wife, has had two miscarriages, and was with child again. She was almost crippled with rheumatism, and showed me a pair of poor swollen knees that made my heart ache. I have promised her a pair of flannel trousers, which I must forthwith set about making.

  Sarah, Stephen’s wife; this woman’s case and history alike are deplorable. She has had four miscarriages, had brought seven children into the world, five of whom were dead, and was again with child. She complained of dreadful pains in the back, and an internal tumor which swells with the exertion of working in the fields; probably I think, it is ruptured.... I suppose her constant childbearing and hard labor in the fields at the same time may have produced... temporary insanity...

  I ask these questions about their children because I think the number they bear as compared with the number they rear a fair gauge of the effect of the system on their own health and that of their offspring. There was hardly one of these, as you will see by the details I have noted of their ailments, who might not have been a candidate for a bed in a hospital, and they had come to me after working all day in the fields.

  Kemble admired the patience with which suffering enslaved black women endured their harsh lot, but she was not unaware of the “utter despair” that was often masked by their quiet acceptance.

  Mass sexual exploitation of enslaved black women was a direct consequence of the anti-woman sexual politics of colonial

  patriarchal America. Since the black woman was not protected either by law or public opinion, she was an easy target. While racism was clearly the evil that had decreed black people would be enslaved, it was sexism that determined that the lot of the black female would be harsher, more brutal than that of the black male slave. That sexism was not limited solely to white men. The slaveowner’s encouragement of mating between black women and men led to the establishment of a black slave sub-culture. Within the black slave sub-culture a similar sexual politics emerged. Initially, slave women were compelled by their masters to mate indiscriminately. It was not uncommon for a master to grant a favored black male slave the privilege of marrying a slave girl or woman of his choice, even if she was a reluctant partner. This practice was not successful. Resistance to forced mating often led to such social upheavals that most masters deemed it wiser to allow black slave women and men to choose their own partners. The couple would make others aware of their commitment by setting up a nuclear household in a vacant hut or cabin. As the displaced Africans assimilated American values, they wanted to have the ecclesiastical and civil ceremonies their masters and mistresses had; they desired public acknowledgement of their union. Although there were never any legally acknowledged marriages between slaves, they wanted the same marriage rituals their white owners enacted. On some plantations slaves carried out traditional African marriage rites—the asking of relatives for a woman’s hand and the offering of a small dowry. Many white plantation owners incorporated the practice of engaged couples holding hands and jumping over a broom as a marriage ritual for slaves as it had once been a popular ritual among early American white colonizers. On a few plantations, masters allowed marriage ceremonies to be performed by an ordained minister despite the fact that the service had no legal significance. Most slaves desired a minister to perform the marriage ceremony because they observed that this was a norm of the dominant culture. Undoubtedly courtships and marriages between slaves were important because the happiness of such occasions augmented the harsh reality of slave life. In his slave narrative, Thomas Jones declared that the slave who was: despised and trampled upon by a cruel race of unfeeling men would die in the prime of his wretched life, if he found no refuge in a dear home, where love and sympathy shall meet him from hearts made sacred to him by his own irrepressible affections and tendernesses for them.

  Sex roles in the black slave sub-culture mirrored those of patriarchal white America. Within the black slave sub-culture, it was the black female who cooked for the family, cleaned the hut or cabin, nursed the sick, washed and mended the clothes, and cared for the needs of children. Black slave men regarded tasks like cooking, sewing, nursing, and even minor farm labor as woman’s work. In her study of white women in the south, The Southern Lady, Anne Scott describes an incident in which a black slave man refused to perform a task he considered beneath his male dignity:

  On a farm in a moment of crisis when the mother and all the children were ill, a Negro slave rejected in bewilderment the suggestion, that he milk the cow, on the grounds that everybody knew that to be woman’s work and
therefore impossible for him to undertake.

  While enslaved black men were in no position to be completely accepted as patriarchal authority figures with the right to rule over women, enslaved black females did conform to existing sex-role patterns that granted men higher status than women. Frances Butler Leigh (the daughter of Fanny Kemble) noted that among slaves in the Georgia Sea Islands “the good old law of female submission to the husband’s will on all points held good.” Acceptance of male superiority was particularly emphasized in the religious teachings preached to slaves. Christian slave women resolutely believed that it was natural that they be subservient to men. A plantation owner from Lounders Count, Mississippi, Mr. William Ervin, set up rules to govern his slaves which were based on the sex role patterns established by patriarchy. One rule read:

  Each family to live in their own house. The husbands to provide fire wood and see that they are all provided for and wait on his wife. The wife to cook and wash for the husband and her children and attend to the mending of clothes. Failure on either part when proven shall and must be corrected by words first but if not reformed to be corrected by the whip.

  The practice of masters and mistresses identifying a slave woman by her husband’s name (Scipio’s Jane or John’s Sue), indicates that whites accorded the black male slave a higher status than that of the female slave. Historian Eugene Genovese contends:

  Sensible masters actually encouraged a limited sexual division of labor among their slaves and saw some advantages in strengthening the power of the male in the household.

  As regards hierarchies based solely on race, the social status of black women and men was the same, but sexist differentiation caused the lot of the male to be distinguished from that of the female. A measure of social equality existed between the sexes in the area of work but nowhere else. Black women and men often performed the exact same tasks in agricultural labor, but even in that area black women could not rise to leadership positions. Outside the work arena, in day-to-day life, female slaves were treated differently from male slaves and were in some instances the subordinates of male slaves.

  In an attempt to explain the impact of slavery on black sex role patterns, many contemporary scholars have concluded that the black woman was a more important figure in the slave household than the black male, and that as a result masculinity was compromised. An undue emphasis on black “masculinity” has emerged as sociologists and historians have attempted to explain the damaging effects of racist oppression on black people. Misinformation began circulating when scholars shifted the burden of responsibility away from the institution of slavery and its white supporters onto black people. As part of their effort to explain the negative impact of slavery on the black family without placing the blame or responsibility on white racism, they argued that it could be understood in the framework of black male-female sexual politics. They reasoned that as the black female’s role in the slave household was more important than that of the black male, his masculinity had been compromised and consequently the fabric of the black family structure dissolved. They identify the culprit as the domineering black woman. White racist colonizers distorted reality when they talked about the de-masculinization of black men. In actuality, there was nothing unusual about slave women assuming a dominant role in the domestic household in 19th century America. In so doing, they were merely imitating the behavior of white mistresses. The dominant role white women played in the 19th century domestic household has not led scholars to theorize about ineffectual white masculinity; quite the opposite has occurred. The 19th century is usually seen as a period in American history when white patriarchy was the stronghold of the American family.

  But this strong white patriarchy did not prevent 19th century white women from assuming the dominant role in the household. Nancy Cott, author of Bonds of Womanhood, describes the discrepancy between the patriarchal ideal that would have had white men be the supreme head of the household and the 19th century reality:

  Legally and economically the husband/father controlled the family, but rhetorically the vocation of domesticity gave women the domestic sphere for their own, to control, and influence. Motherhood was proposed as the central lever with which women would bridge the world and, in practice it offered the best opportunity to women to heighten their domestic power. The authors of “domestic education” books assumed that children lived mostly in the presence of their mothers and not their fathers, even though final authority (legally and conventionally) was patriarchal.

  It is safe to assume that if white women playing a dominant role in the 19th century domestic household did not lead to the de-masculinization and undermining of white male power, the enslaved black woman playing a dominant role in the slave household represented no threat to the already powerless black male. The major distinction between the familial role played by white male slaveowners and that of black male slaves within the sub-culture was that black men were denied the opportunity to act as providers for their families. According to some scholars, it was the inability of black men to adequately provide coupled with the dominant role played by black women in slave households that resulted in de-masculinization. They ignore

  two realities. First, that in 19th century America emphasis on the home and family as “woman’s sphere” was all pervasive, so that it was not unusual for the role played by black women to take precedence over that of black men. And the reality was that black men were able workers and providers, only white people reaped the benefits of their labor. It is ludicrous to assume that black men who labored at their various tasks from twelve to sixteen hours a day had doubts about their ability to provide— and is probably more accurate to assert that enslaved black men, rather than feeling de-masculinized, were outraged and angry that racist oppression prevented them from reaping the benefits of their labor. In keeping with the sexual politics of 19th century America, many black slave men felt very strongly that it was their duty to provide for the economic well-being of their family and they felt bitter resentment and remorse that the slave system did not enable them to fulfill this role. Feeling remorse, anger, and resentment cannot be seen as synonymous with feeling de-masculinized.

  Enslaved black people accepted patriarchal definitions of male-female sex roles. They believed, as did their white owners, that woman’s role entailed remaining in the domestic household, rearing children, and obeying the will of husbands. Anne Scott sums up the image of the 19th century idealized woman in the following passage:

  This marvelous creation was described as a submissive wife whose reason for being was to love, honor, obey, and occasionally amuse her husband, to bring up his children and manage his household. Physically weak, and ‘formed for the less laborious occupations,’ she depended upon male protection. To secure this protection she was endowed with the capacity to ‘create a magic spell’ over any man in her vicinity. She was timid and modest, beautiful and graceful, ‘the most fascinating being in creation... the delight and charm of every circle she moves in.’

  Part of her charm lay in her innocence.. She was capable of acute perceptions about human relationships, and was a creature of tact, discernment, sympathy, and compassion. It was her nature to be self-denying, and she was given to suffering in silence, a characteristic said to endear her to men. Less endearing, perhaps, but no less natural, was her piety and her tendency to ‘restrain man’s

  natural vice and immorality.’ She was thought to be most deeply interested in the success of every scheme which curbs the passions and enforces a true morality.’

  The “cult of true womanhood” that emerged during the 19th century had an intense demoralizing impact on enslaved black females. They were not proud of their ability to labor alongside men in the fields and wanted more than anything for their lot to be the same as that of white women. White male slaveowners and overseers found that slave women could best be manipulated by promises of a new dress, a hair ribbon, or a parasol—anything that emphasized their femininity. So great was the slave wom
an’s desire to appear feminine and ladylike that many chose to wear dresses to work in the fields rather than don trousers that, though more practical, were seen as masculine attire. Originally displaced African women attached no stigma to female labor in the fields but as they assimilated white American values they accepted the notion that it was debasing and degrading for women to work in the fields. As a farm laborer, the black male slave performed the same tasks he would have had to perform as a free person, but black women were well aware that it was not deemed ladylike or respectable for women to work in the fields. Henry Watson, a plantation owner in Alabama, complained to his daughter in 1865 about the black female workers on his plantation:

  The women say that they never mean to do anymore outdoor work, that white men support their wives; and they mean that their husbands shall support them.

  Although black female slaves often boasted of their work ability, they longed to be treated with the same regard and consideration they believed was due them as a woman’s privilege in patriarchal society. Watson reported at a later date:

  The female laborers are almost invariably idle—do not go into the fields but desire to play the lady and be supported by their husbands ‘like the white folks do.’

  The fact that enslaved black women were forced to labor as “men” and to exist independently of male protection and provision did not lead to the development of a feminist consciousness.

  They did not advocate social equality between the sexes. Instead they bitterly resented that they were not considered “women” by the dominant culture and therefore were not the recipients of the considerations and privileges given white women. Modesty, sexual purity, innocence, and a submissive manner were the qualities associated with womanhood and femininity that enslaved black women endeavored to attain even though the conditions under which they lived continually undermined their efforts. When freedom came, black women resolved to cease their labor in the fields. White plantation owners were shocked when large numbers of black female workers refused to work in the fields once slavery ended. An examination of 1865 and 1866 plantation records caused Theodore Wilson to surmise that “the greatest loss to the labor force resulted from the decision of growing numbers of Negro women to donate their time to their homes and children.” On those plantations where black women continued to labor in the fields, owners complained that they left their cabins too late in the morning and quit too early in the afternoon. White Southerners expressed amazement that it was a matter of pride among black people for men to support their wives and families. In some cases whites so resented the loss of female workers that they charged black men extra for food and shelter if their wives did not work. By completely accepting the female role as defined by patriarchy, enslaved black women embraced and upheld an oppressive sexist social order and became (along with their white sisters) both accomplices in the crimes perpetrated against women and the victims of those crimes.