What kind of sufferings did African American women go through during slavery?

Question: What kind of sufferings did African American women go through during slavery!?

WHo made them suffer and how!?Www@QuestionHome@Com

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African American who were slaves were expected to work in the fields alongside the men, and when they finished they would go home and cook and clean and do the washing!. often they were also expected to do a certain quota of spinning or weaving before they went to bed!. Male slaves were not expected to participate in these activities!. In 'America's women' Gail Collins writes:

Although field work was hard, many women slaves prefered it to being house slaves, which meant being under the close watch of an exacting mistress!. House slaves had no downtime, even their meals had to be grabbed on the run!. When white people were in the room, they had to remain standing (A spiritual from the era says "I want to be in heaven sitting down")!. Residents of the Big House even expected slaves to sleep at the foot of their beds, in case they wanted something during the night!. Angelina Grimke said she knew of a black woman who had been married eleven years "and yet has never been allowed to sleep out of her mistress's chamber!."

Slaves were not permitted to learn to read or write!. But despite all the obstacles about 5 percent of the slaves learnt to read anyway!. Some were taught by their owners!. Others simply listened while their master's children learnt their ABCs, and taught themselves!. The idea of educating African americans was so threatening in the South that even white women who taught free black children were sometimes arrested and a literate slave caught teaching others would generally be sold as a punishment!.!.

When female slaves were whipped they were often stripped to the waist or tied to a tree, or from a rafter in the barn!. Pregnant women were beaten too!. "They'd dig a hole in the ground and put their stomach in the hole and then beat them" recounted Annie Clark, a former slave!.

Although slaves were not allowed to marry legally, but they almost always celebrated their union with a ceremony!. But the ministers never said "what god has joined together, let no man put asunder"!. The white owner could sunder a marriage with the wave of a pen, and in the eyes of the law, slaves could no more marry than they could go to court, own property, or control their children's fate!. One black preacher in Kentucky, in a stroke of realism, told his brides and grooms that they were married "until death or distance do you part!."

The threat of being sold hung over every family!. One historian estimated that over a typical slave woman's thirty-five years life, she had a fifty-fifty chance of being sold at least once, and would likely see the sale of several members of her family!. "Oh my mother! My mother!" I kept saying to myself "Oh my mammy and my sisters and my brothers, shall I ever see you again!" wrote Mary Prince,a former slave recallin gthe day she was sold away from her family!. Sojourner Truth's parents woke up one morning to find their owners bundling their five-year-old son and three-year-old daughter into a sleigh and driving them off to sale!. The episode haunted Truth's childhood!.

Slave women were actually less likely to die in childbirth than their mistresses - probably because they got a lot of exercise, did not wear corsets, and were spared the services of nineteenth-century phyisicians!. But their infants died at twice the rate of white babies because of poor prenatal care and bad nutrition!. More than a third died before age ten!. Nursing mothers were usually sent back to the fields and allowed to leave a few times a day to nurse their babies!. The process of dashing back and forth was so exhausting that many infants were weaned prematurely!.

Next to the sale of their children or spouse, rape was perhaps the worst nightmare of slavery!. We have no way of knowing how often it happened!. At the end of the Civil War, somewhere between 10 and 20 percent of the slaves were beleived to be part white, but how many of those mixed bloodlines resulted from voluntary couplings, and how many women were assaulted without becoming pregnant, it is impossible to calculate!. We do know that white women were haunted by the fear that their husbands, fathers, or sons were having sex with their slaves!. And we know that blackmothers nervously watched their daughters to protect them from dangers they could not understand!. Harriet Jacob, who was sexually harrassed by her master, called puberty "a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl"!. Rather than warning their daughters against dangers they could not really avoid, mothers apparently prefered to to shield girls from learning anything about sex at all for as long as possible!.

A woman who tried to repulse her master risked a beating, but one who gave in risked antagonising the mistress of the household!. One ex-slave told the story of a white woman who "slipped into a coloured gal's room and cut her baby's head clean off because it belonged to her husband!." The white community tended to believe that every AFrican American woman yearned to "bring a little mulatto into the world" but in fact many slave communities resented the half-white children who reminded them that black men were unable to protect their wives and daughters!.'Www@QuestionHome@Com

they were raped, by the plantation owner, other slaves, and probably more peopleWww@QuestionHome@Com

Heart break!. Their children were sold when they were babies!. The Women were sold away from their husbands!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

They were torn from their families, their lives and their homes!. They were forced to endure being kept prisoner and starved as a way of keeping them "in line!." They were forced onto ships that carried them away from all they've ever known and were raped and tortured so violently that a lot of them committed suicide when ever it was possible!. Better dead than to live a life of degradation!. Who caused their suffering!?!?!? Slave traders (both black and white) slave owners who were mostly (if not all) white!.Www@QuestionHome@Com