Voices of Slavery: ‘They Were Saving Me For a Breeding Woman’

[KamaAina]

http://www.thiscruelwar.com/voices-of-slavery-they-were-saving-me-for-a-breeding-woman/

During 1929 and 1930, an Africa-American scholar named Ophelia Settle Egypt, conducted nearly 100 interviews with former slaves. Working then at Fisk University, she was the first person to ever conduct such a large scale endeavor. Accompanied by Charles Johnson, a black sociologist, she was able to get the former slaves to open up about the waning days of the institution. In 1945, she finally published her Unwritten History of Slavery, which collected thirty-eight transcripts of the interviews. Each account, published anonymously, painted a fuller picture of black slavery in Tennessee and Kentucky, where most of the interviewees had resided.

This first account, entitled “One of Dr. Gale’s ‘Free Niggers’,” is surprisingly candid about the rape of slave women by their owners, as well as other aspects of such relationships.

Just the other day we were talking about white people when they had slaves. You know when a man would marry, his father would give him a woman for a cook and she would have children right in the house by him, and his wife would have children, too. Sometimes the cook’s children favored him so much that the wife would be mean to them and make him sell them. If they had nice long hair she would cut it off and wouldn’t let them wear it long like the white children.

They would buy a fine girl and then a fine man and just put them together like cattle; they would not stop to marry them. If she was a good breeder, they was proud of her. I was stout and they were saving me for a breeding woman but by the time I was big enough I was free. I had an aunt in Mississippi and she had about twenty children by her marster. On Sunday they would get us ready to go to church. They would dress us up after we ask them if we could go and they would have me walk off from them and they would look at me, and I’d hear them saying, “She’s got a fine shape; she’ll make a good breeder,” but I didn’t know what they were talking about.

[Ilsa]

1. OMG.

And I'm sure the deniers will be claiming it's all a work of fiction. Or that this was a great life to have.

[Younemeen]

3. as usual?

[misterhighwasted]

2. Thanks for this OP. These stories need to be told.

America needs to acknowledge the inhumane treatment, the shame & move to make the country a better place for the future.

If I had lived in that time I'm sure I would have been part of the Underground RR.

This is a necessary read.
Thank you.

[SunSeeker]

4. Denying this happened is akin to holocaust denial. nt

[misterhighwasted]

5. My thoughts exactly as I read this. Yet some still justify both through their denial.

The RW still claims the superiority of white & wealthy.
Being white doesn't let you in the Club. You must be also wealthy & swear your heritage above all others.

Today that same small group clings dearly to the top rung of the ladder where true freedom is only for them.
Every minority group is seen as a target & a threat.

I hope this election ushers in proof of such a resounding denouncing of that influence in our political system.
The candidacy of Donald Trump, & now knowing those who make up his base should forever teach Americans to never ever be complacent with those we elect.

Definately bkkmarking this OP.

[malaise]

6. K & R

There are quite a few like this one