The video explores the unique experiences of black women during the early days of American slavery. It delves into the specific challenges they faced, including sexual violence, forced reproductive roles, and the laborious tasks they were required to perform both domestically and in the fields. It highlights the added dimension of gender to their plight, which made them vulnerable in ways distinct from black men.

The video is an insightful look at how entrenched patriarchy affected the worth and treatment of enslaved women. While women were often seen as less valuable monetarily than men due to these gender biases, they were nonetheless critically important to the economics of slave society due to their ability to reproduce. Figures like Sojourner Truth and her journey shed light on the personal and communal struggles endured by these women.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. patriarchy [ˈpeɪtrɪˌɑrki] - (n.) - A social system in which men hold primary power and dominance in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege, and control of property. - Synonyms: (male dominance, male authority, father-rule)

The deeply entrenched patriarchy in European cultures extended across racial lines and played a significant role and shaping African captives monetary worth.

2. partus sequitur ventrem [ˈpɑːrtʊs ˈsɛkwɪtʊr ˈvwɛntrɛm] - (phrase) - A legal doctrine meaning 'that which is brought forth follows the womb,' establishing that children's status followed that of their mother. - Synonyms: (maternal descent, mother-child status rule, womb law)

...one of the most consequential laws that developed around slavery in the colonial era was Virginia's use of partis sequitur ventrum, codified by the Virginia assembly in 1662, which established the legal precedent that defined an enslaved person by their mother's status not their father's.

3. chattel slavery [ˈtʃæt̬.əl ˈsleɪ.vər.i] - (n.) - A form of slavery in which the enslaved person is owned for life and the slave owner controls their life and labor. - Synonyms: (bondage, servitude, enslavement)

chattel slavery disrupted traditional gender norms within the colonies and in the emerging United States in profound ways.

4. concubinage [kənˈkjuː.bɪ.nɪdʒ] - (n.) - A practice of living together and having sexual relations without being married, often involving a woman maintained by a man in a status akin to that of a wife but without the same social acknowledgment or rights. - Synonyms: (mistress arrangement, extramarital relationship, informal union)

There was even a practice called the fancy trade, designed specifically for the sale of mixed race women for sexual concubinage and prostitution.

5. insidious [ɪnˈsɪd.i.əs] - (adj.) - Proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects. - Synonyms: (stealthy, treacherous, deceptive)

...racialized and gendered oppression that would continue to evolve in new and insidious ways for centuries to come.

6. foreboding [fɔːrˈboʊ.dɪŋ] - (n.) - A feeling that something bad will happen; a sense of impending evil or misfortune. - Synonyms: (apprehension, dread, misgiving)

The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings.

7. testimony [ˈtes.tɪ.moʊ.ni] - (n.) - A formal written or spoken statement, especially one given in a court of law or about a personal experience. - Synonyms: (declaration, evidence, witness)

Harriet Jacobs provides a detailed account of the sexual violence that shaped the everyday lives of black women in her 1861 autobiography, Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl.

8. monetary worth [ˈmʌnɪteri wɜːrθ] - (n.) - The financial value of an item or person; the amount for which something can be sold. - Synonyms: (financial value, economic value, cost)

The deeply entrenched patriarchy in European cultures extended across racial lines and played a significant role and shaping African captives monetary worth.

9. exploit [ɪkˈsplɔɪt] - (v.) - To make use of something or someone in a way that is unfair or unethical, often to benefit oneself. - Synonyms: (take advantage of, misuse, manipulate)

Buying a laborer who could bear children meant that once those children got older, the enslaver could either exploit that child's labor or sell that child for a profit.

10. bondage [ˈbɑːndɪdʒ] - (n.) - The state of being a slave or in a condition of servitude. - Synonyms: (captivity, enslavement, subjugation)

She directly experienced and spoke about life as a black woman in bondage.

Women's Experience Under Slavery - Crash Course Black American History #11

Hi, I'm Clint Smith, and this is Crash course Black American History. And today we're talking about black women's experiences in the early days of American slavery. Enslavement, as has been made obvious by now, was inherently cruel to anyone subjected to it. But it's important for us to note the unique ways that men and women experience the institution in different ways because of their sex.

Women's experiences under slavery gave them specific vantage points from which to observe what was happening around them and also left them particularly vulnerable to some of the most horrific parts of the institution. So we want to spend a little bit of time talking about the experiences unique to enslaved women directly. I want to note up front that there will be some mentions of sexual violence in this episode.

Upon arrival at American ports, African captives were taken from various trading hubs to be auctioned off to the highest bidder for plantation labor. Historian Dinah Ramey Berry writes in her book the price for their Pound of Flesh, that an enslaved person could be worth anywhere from $4 to $94,000 when adjusted for 2014 numbers. Plantation owners searched for enslaved laborers to cultivate cash crops, the most lucrative of which being cotton, sugar, indigo, tobacco, and rice.

So when these enslavers came to markets searching for new laborers, they considered several factors before making a bid. Enslavers considered the health and strength of potential laborers. They considered age, height, skin color, and the specific skills an enslaved worker might have been able to bring. But there was another element that shaped the hierarchy of value to prospective enslavers, and that's gender.

Gender placed a figurative price ceiling on enslaved women's value, even though, as we'll see, they were often expected to do the exact same labor as enslaved men. The deeply entrenched patriarchy in European cultures extended across racial lines and played a significant role and shaping African captives monetary worth. And even though enslaved women were not sold at the same high price range as enslaved men, their value to those who purchased them was absolutely clear.

In many regions of the colonies, enslaved women's ability to reproduce was hugely important. Buying a laborer who could bear children meant that once those children got older, the enslaver could either exploit that child's labor or sell that child for a profit. And as we've discussed, one of the most consequential laws that developed around slavery in the colonial era was Virginia's use of partis sequitur ventrum, codified by the Virginia assembly in 1662, which established the legal precedent that defined an enslaved person by their mother's status not their father's.

Therefore, regardless of the father's race, an enslaved black woman's child would automatically be classified as the property of her enslaver, meaning that children had from an enslaved woman and a white man who may have even enslaved her would be born into slavery and owned by their father. In their jobs on plantations, enslaved women sometimes did domestic labor, which consisted primarily of cooking, cleaning, waiting on the lady of the house, and caring for the children of the estate.

New and nursing black mothers would often be forced to prioritize the care of the white children of the estate, even at the expense of their own children. It was not uncommon for enslaved women to breastfeed white infants, as it was a task that white women on the plantations sometimes preferred not to do. But while there were many black women who engaged in domestic labor, in most cases enslavers directed women to work outside the home, working the land alongside the men and even their children.

While women's labor in the field was comparable to men's, they weren't always allowed to take on some artisanal positions like carpentry. chattel slavery disrupted traditional gender norms within the colonies and in the emerging United States in profound ways. Black women were seen in fundamentally different ways than white women, and many of the typical notions around gender roles simply did not apply to them.

Sojourner Truth became one of the earliest and foremost speakers to address black women's unique experiences in a racist and sexist society. Spending a little bit of time with her can be illuminating because she directly experienced and spoke about life as a black woman in bondage. Let's go to the thought bubble.

Sojourner Truth was born Isabella Baumfrey, aka Belle, in 1797 in upstate New York. She was purchased and sold four times and was made to do brutal physical labor. Truth, as we've mentioned of other enslaved women before, also attested to having to nurse white babies in place of her own as part of her expected chores.

She also had to tend to poultry, prepare the ground for the cultivation of corn, pumpkins and buckwheat, and even cut the grass, which at that time wasn't as simple as just hopping on a tractor or pushing a lawnmower. It involved a scythe and a lot of upper body strength. It was grueling work. In fact, when her enslaver, John Dumont, offered the possibility of freeing her, she attempted to increase her work product as a show of goodwill.

In the process, though, she lost her index finger during a work accident, which, and a situation filled with cruel irony, led Dumont not to keep his promise, claiming that she had become less productive because of the accident. After realizing that Dumont wouldn't free her, Truth decided that she was going to free herself, so she decided to just walk away. She gathered her still nursing child, said her goodbyes to the rest of her family and left before dawn, eventually reaching a local abolitionist family, the Van Wagenens, who paid Dumont $20 to buy Truth's labor for the remainder of the year.

She remained with the family until she was freed when the New York State Emancipation act went into effect. She'd later successfully sue for the return of her six year old son Peter, who was illegally sold into slavery in Alabama. Thanks, Thought Bubble.

You may have heard of Sojourner Truth because of her famous Ain't I a Woman? Speech, the one where she said, I've borne 13 children and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me. An anile woman.

Well, it turns out that she might not have actually said it in that exact way. Truth gave a speech in 1851, that's for sure, but as historian Nell Painter explains in her book Sojourner, A Life, a Symbol, while this is the version that is most widely circulated, it's not one that's really grounded in, well, truth.

This famous but inaccurate version was written and published 12 years later in 1863 by a white abolitionist named Frances Dana Barker Gage. Not only did Gage change or simply make up some of Sojourner's words, but she also put the speech in a stereotypical Southern black slave accent, rather than in Truth's actual Upper New York State low Dutch accent, which sounded very different. And what's more, the line Gage originally published was aren't I a woman?

But became widely recast as the Ain't I a woman? Speech in the early 20th century. It's a reminder of how throughout slavery, the testimonies of black people were often filtered through others who may or may not have made their own changes along the way.

One of the most horrifying parts of black women's experience in slavery was the pervasive sexual violence and harassment that they were subjected to. Harriet Jacobs provides a detailed account of the sexual violence that shaped the everyday lives of black women in her 1861 autobiography, Incidents of the Life of a Slave Girl, which she originally published under the pseudonym Linda Brent. In order to protect herself, she writes, my master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him If I went out for a breath of fresh air after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me.

If I knelt by my mother's grave, his his dark shadow fell on me. Even there, the light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings. The sexual violence that black women experienced took on many different forms.

There was even a practice called the fancy trade, designed specifically for the sale of mixed race women for sexual concubinage and prostitution. In 1937, a formerly enslaved man, W.L. bost, explains some of these dynamics to an interviewer for the Federal Writers Project, a New Deal Era initiative which recorded the oral testimonies of over 2,300 formerly enslaved people in the late 1930s.

As we mentioned before, black testimonies were often filtered through white perspectives. So when published, these conversations in the Federal Writers Project were often written with a heavy dialect attributed to the black interviewees. Bost is reported as having said, plenty of the colored women have children by the white men.

She know better than to not do what he say. They take them very same children what have they own blood and make slaves out of em. While the use of sexual agency is discussed by many historians and writers as a viable form of resistance, it's important that we not misconstrue it for consent.

The writer and scholar Saidiya Hartman urges us to redefine rape and sexual assault within the context of slavery. Women who were legally defined as property were never in a position to provide consent when in so many ways their bodies and their choices did not belong to them in the first place. With that in mind, relationships with an enslaver, to the extent that any such association can be called a relationship, given the power dynamics in place, could provide some women certain types of protection and some small privileges that other enslaved people did not receive.

And that could take on many forms. It could mean not having to work in the field. It could mean having slightly better food for one's family. It could also mean keeping one's children safe from harm or from being sold away.

Black women were presented with a series of impossible choices, and each one decided for themselves how to navigate it. Slavery was an all encompassing oppressive institution, and enslaved life and labor were difficult regardless of someone's sexual but it did not affect black men and black women in the same ways, and it's important that we be precise about that.

Their experiences reveal that as critical as black women's labor and reproduction were to the early American economies, they were not valued as such, not on the auction block and certainly not in respect to their womanhood. Black women's particular experiences during the era of slavery give us insight into the early iterations of racialized and gendered oppression that would continue to evolve in new and insidious ways for centuries to come.

Black History, Women'S History, Slavery, Education, Inspiration, Motivation, Crashcourse