Female Slavery
The institution of slavery in North America existed from the earliest years of the colonial period up until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln freed slaves in the rebellious southern states through the Emancipation Proclamation. The Thirteenth Amendment, taking effect in December 1865, permanently abolished slavery throughout the entire United States, including the Border states, such as Kentucky, which still had about 50,000 slaves, and among the Indian tribes. For most of the seventeenth and part of the eighteenth century, male slaves outnumbered female slaves making the two groups' experiences distinct. Living and working in a wide range of circumstances and regions, African-American women and men encountered diverse experiences of enslavement. With increasing numbers of imported and American-born women, slave sex ratios leveled out between 1730 and 1750. "The uniqueness of the African-American female's situation is that she stands at the crossroads of two of the most well-developed ideologies in America, that regarding women and that regarding the Negro." Occupying both female and black identities, enslaved African women faced the double oppressions of racism and sexism.
Read more about Female Slavery: Revolutionary Era, Antebellum Period, Emancipation and The Ending of Slavery, Notable Enslaved African American Women, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words female and/or slavery:
“In life, then, no new thing has ever arisen, or can arise, save out of the impulse of the male upon the female, the female upon the male. The interaction of the male and female spirit begot the wheel, the plough, and the first utterance that was made on the face of the earth.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Shatter the icons of slavery and fear.
Replace
the leer
of the minstrel’s burnt-cork face
with a proud, serene
and classic bronze of Benin.”
—Dudley Randall (b. 1914)