Female slavery in the United States

Enslaved women of African descent had complex experiences because they were both Black and female. Historian Deborah Gray White notes that they were affected by two powerful ideas in American society: racism and sexism. From the moment they were taken on the Middle Passage, they were treated differently because of their gender. Like enslaved men, they did hard physical labor, but they also faced sexual abuse from enslavers, who often used harmful stereotypes about Black women to justify it.

Stereotypes and mythology

Enslavers often used the Jezebel and Mammy stereotypes to justify how they treated enslaved women. The Jezebel stereotype described Black women as having extreme sexual desire. This idea started when Englishmen traveled to Africa to buy slaves. They misinterpreted African clothing (needed for the hot climate) and cultural practices like polygamy as signs of uncontrolled lust. By making Jezebel the opposite of the ideal Victorian woman, enslavers used this stereotype to dismiss claims of sexual abuse against Black women.

The Mammy stereotype came from writings after the Civil War. It portrayed Black women as skilled, loyal house servants who supposedly loved their enslavers’ white children more than their own. This image made slavery seem less cruel, suggesting enslaved women lived happy, domestic lives. In reality, house servants had little privacy and were constantly under watch, often more so than field workers, and faced the harsh moods of the white families they served.

Experiences of motherhood in slavery

Enslaved Black mothers had distinct experiences shaped by the conditions of slavery. They were both valued and mistreated for their ability to have children, as enslavers saw their reproductive capacity as a way to increase their labor force. Once slaveholders realized they could profit from enslaved women’s pregnancies, they began manipulating these women’s sexual and reproductive lives as part of their broader exploitation. Enslaved mothers were also frequently forced to work as wet nurses—breastfeeding the infants of white enslavers. Many were made to nurse white babies while being separated from their own, or after being sold away from their infants. Some enslaved women’s babies suffered or even died from malnutrition because their mothers’ milk was diverted to white children. This practice reinforced the harmful “Mammy” stereotype and required enslaved women to care for enslavers’ families over their own.

Long before the transatlantic slave trade, European travelers described African women as having a “special ability” to nurse because of supposed physical traits. These descriptions contributed to sexualized and exploitative portrayals of enslaved wet nurses, helping enslavers justify both sexual abuse and the use of their bodies to care for white infants. Because of the harsh demands of slavery, enslaved women often relied on communal caregiving. They shared childcare responsibilities with other women, a practice that reflected African traditions in which women supported one another in raising children. This shared mothering helped preserve elements of African culture—especially the strong value placed on motherhood—which enslaved women likely passed down to their daughters.

Virginia

Between 1700 and 1740, about 43,000 enslaved people were brought to Virginia, and all but around 4,000 came directly from Africa. Recent research shows that roughly equal numbers of men and women arrived, and many of them were children. Because most came from West Africa, West African cultural traditions strongly shaped the lives of enslaved people in Virginia during the mid- to late 1700s. These traditions included strong mother-child relationships and tight bonds among women.

Many enslaved people were Igbo, from present-day Nigeria. In Igbo society, women held important leadership roles, such as the omu, who had authority over matters affecting women and the wider community. Although the Igbo were one major group brought to the Chesapeake, enslaved Africans came from many different cultures, almost all of which had strong women’s communities. Upon arrival, they were forced into a patriarchal, racist, and violent system in which white men often portrayed Black women as highly sexual to excuse their own abuse of them. Girls of African descent in Virginia usually had no access to education. Enslaved African and African American women worked in many roles. While the southern colonies relied heavily on agriculture and required women to work in the fields, most enslaved women labored inside enslavers’ homes—nursing, childcare, cooking, laundry, and other domestic tasks.

New England

Historian Ira Berlin drew a distinction between “slave societies” and “societies with slaves.” By his definition, New England was a society with slaves: its economy relied on maritime trade and mixed farming, not on large-scale slave labor. In contrast, the southern colonies were true slave societies—their economies, politics, and social structures depended heavily on slavery, they had much larger enslaved populations, and slaveholders had broad legal power over enslaved people. In New England, enslavers were fewer in number and often viewed themselves as paternal figures responsible for guiding and caring for the people they enslaved. Enslaved women in New England had more opportunities for freedom than those in other regions because of the local legal system, relatively frequent manumissions, and chances to be hired out. Enslaved men who were hired out sometimes earned money to purchase freedom for their wives and children.

Most enslaved women carried out domestic work and were commonly hired out for short periods. They served mainly as household laborers—working in kitchens, barns, and gardens—and performed tasks such as cleaning, carrying water, emptying chamber pots, polishing furniture and silver, caring for children and the elderly, cooking, baking, sewing, knitting, spinning, milking cows, feeding chickens, and doing laundry. Although this work was generally less physically demanding than the field labor common in other regions, it was still exhausting. Many enslaved women lived in harsh conditions and suffered from poor diets. As a result, the average life expectancy for Black women in New England was under forty years.