The Importance Of Slavery In Ghana

1186 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Slavery in the colonial times

The period between the late 16th- 18th century marked the rise and fall of a harsh and oppressive system of forced labor known as slavery. Both men and women were forced into demanding field work, mental torture, and denied basic human rights. Slaves (regardless of sex) were systematically beaten, separated from their families, and were treated as property. Whole communities were broken and destroyed. But, somehow the slave narrative has been limited to the experience of the men. Books, entertainment and the media are flooded with the stories of the men. If someone was to search “slave” into Google, the results would be filled with pictures and drawings of black men. Women were as essential to slavery as their male counterparts. The intersection Marriages amongst slaves was as one would expect unstable. This resulted from lack of socioeconomic power. Slaves were regarded as property. Thus, they could not legally get married. However, there were couples who got married in spite of the government. It was a way of forming some stability in their lives. In order to get married in these slave communities the couple had to “jump the broom”. The couple would hold hands and jump over a broom. It was a way to create new customs. The tradition of “jumping the broom” originated from Ghana. It symbolizes the sweeping away of the past and starting anew. This ceremony gave their unions legitimacy within their Jobs in the “big house” were almost exclusively for women. House slaves were in charge of the sewing, cooking, cleaning, and tending to the masters children. Skilled slaves were often the most respected in the slave community. These cooks often prepare meals not only for the master and his family, but for the other slaves as well. Field work was often times used as a punishment against the house slaves. House slaves often had better living conditions while field slaves worked under the hot sun. Yet and still all endured horrific difficulties. Female slaves were often times molested, raped and beat by their masters. It was common and widely accepted by both the black and white communities. Colonial laws against rape did not apply to the slaves. These rapes would naturally result in the slaves having children by their masters. The control of their reproductive system was essential to the growth of the master’s planation. Forced marriages and now rape were a way to guarantee there would be another generation of

Show More
Related

  • Slavery Dynamics in Wilkes and Glynn County, Georgia

    1019 Words  | 3 Pages

    Unlike agricultural work non-agricultural work was based on gender and age. As a non-agricultural worker you had more close encounters with your slaveholders, this can be both beneficial and not beneficial. With men who had non-agricultural jobs they were artisans. Their jobs consisted of blacksmiths, brickmakers, boatmen and other various jobs. With women they had the jobs like cleaning, feeding, and caring for the slaveholder’s children. Some women were personal slaves to the slaveholders ad did various jobs that comforted the slaveholders. Although working in the house was viewed at as a privilege there were some disadvantages to it especially for the women that worked in the house. These women were open up to being sexually abused by their slaveholders. Although there were disadvantages being a nonagricultural slave had its benefits. Those who had the skills to stay in their slaveholders home had the privilege of running errands, and going on trips with their slaveholders. The house tasks were not only handed out by gender but also by age. (D. R. Berry 2007) Older women would be given the job as a nurse, cooks, and tended to the kids. At the Kelvin Plantation Postell had two elderly men on his plantation that he gave the job of gardening those men were Old Sam and Old Robin. These slaves were not listed on the slaveholder’s roster for monetary value, but they were on the list of bond people who were on the

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Celia, A Slave

    956 Words  | 2 Pages

    All slaves faced struggle in their lives. In particular, female slaves were targeted as objects of abuse and the source for the sexual needs of their masters. Female slaves were seen as employees to any need of their masters. Author, Melton A. Mclaurin displays this when he writes, “A healthy sixty years of age, Newsom needed more than a hostess and manager of house hold affairs; he required a sexual partner” (Mclaurin 21). Anyone who is purchased is pre-purposed for hard labor or personal needs of the purchaser. Mclaurin exemplifies the way that slave masters viewed female slaves at the point of their possession. Though female slaves were acquired to be a mother figure of the household, there were reasons beyond the obvious. It was

    Read More

  • Harriet Jacobs Incidents And A Slave Girl: An Analysis

    1129 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slavery is a term that can create a whirlwind of emotions for everyone. During the hardships faced by the African Americans, hundreds of accounts were documented. Harriet Jacobs, Charles Ball and Kate Drumgoold each shared their perspectives of being caught up in the world of slavery. There were reoccurring themes throughout the books as well as varying angles that each author either left out or never experienced. Taking two women’s views as well as a man’s, we can begin to delve deeper into what their everyday lives would have been like.

    Read More

  • Slavery and the Life of Harriet Jacobs

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    The history of slave women offered by Davis suggests that "compulsory labor overshadowed every other aspect of women's existence" (Davis 5). This is quite apparent through examination of the life of Harriet Jacobs. All slaves were forced to do hard labor and were subject to cruel remarks by whites, in this sense they were genderless, except women endured much more foul treatment. Harriet Jacobs was forced to listen to the sexual berating from her master, Dr. Flint, as well as receive jealous scorn from her mistress, Mrs. Flint. Yet worse than the verbal abuse was the physical, sexual abuse imposed on slave women. "Naming or not naming the father of a child, taking as a wife a woman who had children by unnamed fathers, [and] giving a newborn child the name of a father" were all considered by Herbert Gutman to be "everyday choices" in slave communities (Davis 15). Not being able to name a father must have made slave women feel great pain from being a "genderless" tool and great isolation by forcing them to take care of bastard children on their own. However, the worst comes when the child is old enough to work and, in most cases, is auctioned off. By auctioning off a slave woman's children slave masters not only dehumanized slave women but gave additional pain to slave women by taking their loved children away. Slave...

    Read More

  • Frederick Douglass’s Life in the City and Country

    776 Words  | 2 Pages

    Most slaves in the country, as people well know, worked as field hands and jobs involving the crops and livestock, with the exception of the house slaves. In the city however, slaves worked different types of jobs. “City slaves were typically artisans and craftsmen, stevedors and draymen, barbers and common laborers, and house and hotel servants.” (Starobin 9). Frederick Douglass worked as a house servant and as ...

    Read More

  • Celia A Slave Thesis

    831 Words  | 2 Pages

    Slaves during the mid-1800s were considered chattel and did not have rights to anything that opposed their masters’ wishes. “Although the slaves’ rights could never be completely denied, it had to be minimized for the institution of slavery to function” (McLaurin, 118). Female slaves, however, usually played a different role for the family they were serving than male slaves. Housework and helping with the children were often duties that slaveholders designated to their female slaves. Condoned by society, many male slaveholders used their female property as concubines, although the act was usually kept covert. These issues, aided by their lack of power, made the lives of female slaves

    Read More

  • Did Gender Make a Difference within Slavery?

    789 Words  | 2 Pages

    This a form of mental abuse because it denied the slaves the ability to think for themselves, through denying them the knowledge needed to make important decisions. The life of a female slave seems to be a little more trying then that of a male slaves. This is due to the sexual abuse which the women must endure. Also brought forth was some trials of slavery which do not always come to mind, such as separation anxiety, illiteracy, and sexual abuse.

    Read More

  • Slavery Synthesis Essay

    1347 Words  | 3 Pages

    When one thinks of slavery, they may consider chains holding captives, beaten into submission, and forced to work indefinitely for no money. The other thing that often comes to mind? Stereotypical African slaves, shipped to America in the seventeenth century. The kind of slavery that was outlawed by the 18th amendment, nearly a century and a half ago. As author of Modern Slavery: The Secret World of 27 Million People, Kevin Bales, states, the stereotypes surrounding slavery often confuse and blur the reality of slavery. Although slavery surely consists of physical chains, beatings, and forced labor, there is much more depth to the issue, making slavery much more complex today than ever before.

    Read More

  • Slavery Is Terrible For Women, By Harriet A. Jacobs

    1098 Words  | 3 Pages

    In fact, women had to carry with the pain of having their children wrenched from them. Women were forced to be “breeders” they were meant to bear children to add to their master’s “stock”, but they were denied the right to care for them. It was not something unusual to happen to these women it was considered normal. The master didn’t believe the female slaves had feelings, or the right to ruin their merchandise. It was also not unusual for the plantation master to satisfy his sexual lust with his female slaves and force them to have his children. Children that were born from these unions were often sold to protect the honor and dignity of the slave owner’s wife, who would be forced to face the undeniable proof of her husband’s lust for “black women.”

    Read More

  • Kindred: Through The Eyes Of A Slave

    2436 Words  | 5 Pages

    American History, though relatively short compared to the history of the rest of the world, is a topic taught during all levels of education. From elementary school to college, educators inundate students with the facts and theories regarding the transformation of this country from the dense wilderness of the 1600s to the bustling cities of today. While there are many events and time periods in this nation’s history that have shaped its culture and society, one of the most thoroughly studied eras in American History is that of slavery in the antebellum south. Every third grader through college senior has taken at least one class in which the teacher or professor throws out facts and figures about the horrors of slavery, or shows pictures of the squalor of slave quarters with the intention of shocking and upsetting the inhabitants of the classroom. Most students, however, are never taught the whole story. They never learn about the lives behind the numbers or the events behind the pictures. Additionally, most of the stories students do learn about are purely negative and typically about the life of a male field hand. Hardly any lectures focus on the few positive aspects of slave life or the characteristics of life as a female slave. In her novel, Kindred, Octavia Butler aims to reveal what life was actually like for slaves, especially female slaves, in the years preceding the Civil War. Though this book is classified as science fiction, Butler’s depiction of slavery is surprisingly accurate, however not entirely complete. Through the course of the novel, Butler investigates every aspect of female slave life from birth through death including the work expected of a bondwoman, treatment of slaves by white owners, marriage and child b...

    Read More

  • Gender Slavery And Freedom Essay

    1004 Words  | 3 Pages

    During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black

    Read More

  • 12 Years a Slave

    1194 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...en that were enslaved with Northup were forced to live up to the expectations of their slave masters. Out on the field, the women did not receive any special treatment, as was the case for Patsey. Under the cover of darkness, the slave masters would have their way with the women slaves, claiming that they were “their property to do as they please with”. Finally, the worst was the separation of women from their children as they were sold into slavery. Without a doubt, the experiences of slaves were gendered in many ways.

    Read More

  • The Relationship Between Slaves and Their Master

    1188 Words  | 3 Pages

    Slave women were also subjected to sexual abuse by their masters. The masters demanded sexual relations from the slave women they found desirable. They did this without any consideration of their own personal marital status and that of the slave. There was tension between slave husbands of abused women and their masters often resulting in fights between the two. Slave women were also subjected to jealousy and rage from mistresses whose husbands’ engaged in these illicit affairs. In conclusion, the slave could not expect to enjoy a fulfilling relationship with the master. The very essence of slavery was cruel and demeaning, making it difficult for any meaningful and mutually satisfying relationship to exist.

    Read More

  • The Trial Of Girlhood And A Perilous Passage In The Slave Girl's Life Analysis

    758 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion, women were considered property and slave holders treated them as they pleased. We come to understand that there was no law that gave protection to female slaves. Harriet Jacob’s narrative shows the true face of how slaveholders treated young female slave. The female slaves were sexually exploited which damaged them physically and psychologically. Furthermore it details how the slave holder violated the most sacred commandment of nature by corrupting the self respect and virtue of the female slave. Harriet Jacob writes this narrative not to ask for pity or to be sympathized but rather to show the white people to be aware of how female slaves constantly faced sexual exploitation which damaged their body and soul.

    Read More

  • Essay On History Of Ghana

    864 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ghana was named after the medieval West African Ghana Empire. The Empire got referred to in Europe and Arabia as the Ghana Empire after the title of its head, the Ghana. The Empire seems to have split up taking after the 1076 triumph by the Almoravid General Abu-Bakr Ibn-Umar. A decreased kingdom kept on existing after Almoravid standard finished, and the kingdom was later consolidated into consequent Sahelian Empires. The antiquated Ghana Empire was roughly 500 miles (800 km) north and west of the present day state of Ghana, and controlled regions in the range of the Senegal River and east towards the Niger waterways, in present Senegal, Mauritania and Mali.

    Read More

More about The Importance Of Slavery In Ghana

Open Document