The Black Scholar

Journal of Black Studies and Research

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Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the

Community of Slaves

Angela Davis

To cite this article: Angela Davis (1971) Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the
Community of Slaves, The Black Scholar, 3:4, 2-15, DOI: 10.1080/00064246.1971.11431201

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Downloaded by [Emory University] at 05:10 04 April 2016
 ANGELA DAVIS is presently being held, without Party and the second time for her speeches and
bail, in the Marin County Jail in San Rafael, other activities on behalf of the Soledad Brothers
California facing three capital charges of murder, and all political prisoners. Her book, lf They Come
ltidnapping, and conspiracy to commit both. The in the Morning: Voices of Resistance, edited by
charges stem from an abortive escape by black Angela Davis and Bettina Aptheker, was published
prisoners from the Marin County Court House, October 1971 by Third Press, New York, New
Aug. 7, 1970. She has denied any involvement in York. Containing a number of fundamental essays
the attempted escape. Prior to her arrest Sister by Angela Davis, it includes articles by Bettina
Davis was teaching in the Philosophy Department Aptheker, James Baldwin, Margaret Burnham,
at the University of California in Los Angeles. Ericka Huggins, Ruchell Magee, Howard Moore,
She was fired twice by the University's Regents: Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and The Soledad
once because she is a member of the Communist Brothers.

INTRODUCTION

I was immensely pleased to learn of THE BLACK SCHOLAR's plans to devote

an entire issue to the black woman.
The paucity of literature on the black woman is outrageous on its face.
But we must also contend with the fact that too many of these rare studies must
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claim as their signal achievement the reinforcement of fictitious cliches. They

have given credence to grossly distorted categories through which the black
woman continues to be perceived. In the words of Nathan and Julia Hare,
" . . . she has been labeled 'aggressive' or 'matriarchal' by white scholars and
'castrating female' by [some] blacks." (Transaction, Nov.-Dec., 1970) Many
have recently sought to remedy this situation. But for the time being, at least,
we are still confronted with these reified images of ourselves. And for now,
we must still assume the responsibility of shattering them.
Initially, I did not envision this paper as strictly confined to the era of
slavery. Yet, as I began to think through the issue of the black matriarch, I
came to the conclusion that it had to be refuted at its presumed historical
inception.
The chief problem I encountered stemmed from the conditions of my incar-
ceration: opportunities for researching the issue I wanted to explore were
extremely limited. I chose, therefore, to entitle this piece "Reflections . . . "
It does not pretend to be more than a collection of ideas which would consitute
a starting point - a framework within which to conduct a rigorous reinvestiga-
tion of the black woman as she interacted with her people and with her oppres-
sive environment during slavery.
I would like to dedicate these reflections to one of the most admirable
black leaders to emerge from the ranks of our liberation movement - to George
Jackson, whom I loved and respected in every way. As I came to know and
love him, I saw him developing an acute sensitivity to the real problems facing
black women and thus refining his ability to distinguish these from their
mythical transpositions. George was uniquely aware of the need to extricate
himself and other black men from the remnants of divisive and destructive
myths purporting to represent the black woman. If his life had not been so
precipitously and savagely extinguished, he would have surely accomplished
a task he had already outlined some time ago: a systematic critique of his
past misconceptions about black women and of their roots in the ideology
of the established order. He wanted to appeal to other black men, still similarly
disoriented, to likewise correct themselves through self-criticism. George viewed
this obligation as a revolutionary duty, but also, and equally important, as an
expression of his boundless love for all black women.
THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971 PAGE 3
 THE MATRIARCHAL black woman has scious existence. 1 Mothers and fathers
been repeatedly invoked as one of were brutally separated; children, when
the fatal by-products of slavery. When the they became of age, were branded and
Moynihan Report consecrated this myth frequently severed from their mothers.
with Washington's stamp of approval, its That the mother was "the only legitimate
spurious content and propagandistic mis- parent of her child" did not therefore mean
sion should have become apparent. Yet that she was even permitted to guide it to
even outside the established ideological maturity.
apparatus, and also among black people, Those who lived under a common roof
unfortunate references to the matriarchate were often unrelated through blood. Fred-
can still be encountered. Occosionally, erick Douglass, for instance, had no recol-
there is even acknowledgement of the lection of his father. He only vaguely re-
"tangle of pathology" it supposedly engen- called having seen his mother - and then
dered. (This black matriarchate, according on extremely rare occasions. Moreover, at
to Moynihan et. al. defines the roots of our the age of seven, he was forced to abandon
oppression as a people. ) An accurate por- the dwelling of his grandmother, of whom
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trait of the African woman in bondage he would later say: "She was to me a
must debunk the myth of the matriarchate. mother and a father."Ia The strong personal
Such a portrait must simultaneously at- bonds between immediate family members
tempt to illuminate the historical matrix of which oftentimes persisted despite coerced
her oppression and must evoke her varied, separation bore witness to the remarkable
often heroic, responses to the slaveholder's capacity of black people for resisting the
domination. disorder so violently imposed on their
Lingering beneath the notion of the lives.
black matriarch is an unspoken indictment
of our female forebears as having actively
assented to slavery. The notorious cliche, WHERE FAMILIES were allowed to thrive,
the "emasculating female," has its roots they were, for the most part, external
in the fallacious inference that in playing fabrications serving the designs of an
a central part in the slave "family," the avaricious, profit-seeking slaveholder.
black woman related to the slaveholding
The strong hand of the slave owner domi-
class as collaborator. Nothing could be nated the Negro family, which existed at his
further from the truth. In the most funda- mercy and often at his own personal instiga-
mental sense, the slave system did not - tion. An ex-slave has told of getting married
and could not - engender and recognize a on one plantation: 'When you married, you
matriarchal family structure. Inherent in had to jump over a broom three times.'2
the very concept of the matriarchy is
"power." It would have been exceedingly
1. It is interesting to note a parallel in Nazi Ger-
risky for the slaveholding class to openly many: with all its ranting and raving about
acknowledge symbols of authority - fe- motherhood and the family, Hitler's regime
made a conscious attempt to strip the family
male symbols no less than male. Such of virtually all its social functions. The thrust
legitimized concentrations of authority of their unspoken program for the family was
might eventually unleash their "power" to reduce it to a biological unit and to force its
members to relate in an unmediated fashion to
against the slave system itself. the fascist bureaucracy. Clearly the Nazis en-
deavored to crush the family in order to ensure
that it could not become a center from which
oppositional activity might originate.
THE AMERICAN brand of slavery strove la. Herbert Aptheker, ed. A Documentary Hi.s-
toward a rigidified disorganization in fam- tory of the Negro People in the United States,
New York: The Citadel Press, 1969 ( lst ed.,
ily life, just as it had to proscribe all poten- 1951 ), p. 272.
tial social structures within which black 2. Andrew Billingsley, Black Families in White
America, Englewood, New Jersey: Prentice-
people might forge a collective and con- Hall, Inc., 1968, p. 61.
PAGE 4 THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, J97J
 This slave went on to describe the vari- SLAVERY IS AN ancient human institution.
ous ways in which his master forcibly Of slave labor in its traditional form and
coupled men and women with the aim of of serfdom as well, Karl Marx had the fol-
producing the maximum number of healthy lowing to say:
child-slaves. In the words of John Henrik
The slave stands in absolutely no relation
Clarke, to the objective conditions of his labor; it is
The family as a functional entity was out- rather the labor itself, in the form of the
slave as of the serf, which is placed in the
lawed and permitted to exist only when it
category of inorganic condition of production
benefited the slave-master. Maintenance of
alongside the other natural beings, e.g. cattle,
the slave family as a family unit benefited the
or regarded as an appendage of the earth.4
slave owners only when, and to the extent
that such unions created new slaves who
The bondsman's existence as a natural
could be exploited.3
condition of production is complemented
The designation of the black woman as and reinforced, according to Marx, by his
a matriarch is a cruel misnomer. It is a membership in a social grouping which he
misnomer because it implies stable kinship perceives to be an extension of nature. En-
meshed in what appears to be a natural
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structures within which the mother exer-

cises decisive authority. It is cruel because state of affairs, the attitude of the slave, to
a greater or lesser degree, would be an
it ignores the profound traumas the black
acquiescence in his subjugation. Engels
woman must have experienced when she
points out that in Athens, the state could
had to surrender her child-bearing to alien depend on a police force consisting en-
and predatory economic interests. tirely of slaves.s
Even the broadest construction of the The fabric of American slavery differed
matriarch concept would not render it ap- significantly from ancient slavery and
plicable to the black slave woman. But it feudalism. True, black people were forced
should not be inferred that she therefore to act as if they were "inorganic conditions
played no significant role in the community of production." For slavery was "personali-
of slaves. Her indispensable efforts to en- ty swallowed up in the sordid idea of
sure the survival of her people can hardly property - manhood lost in chattelhood.''6
But there were no pre-existent social struc-
be contested. Even if she had done no
tures or cultural dictates which might in-
more, her. deeds would still be laudable.
duce reconciliation to the circumstances of
But her concern and struggles for physical their bondage. On the contrary, Africans
survival, while clearly important, did not had been uprooted from their natural en-
constitute her most outstanding contribu- vironment, their social relations, their cul-
tions. It will be submitted that by virtue ture. No legitimate socio-cultural surround-
of the brutal force of circumstances, the ings would be permitted to develop and
black woman was assigned the mission flourish, for, in all likelihood, they would
of promoting the consciousness and prac- be utterly incompatible with the demands
tice of resistance. A great deal has been of slavery.
said about the black man and resistance,
but very little about the unique relation- 3. John Henrik Clarke, "The Black Woman: A
ship black women bore to the resistance Figure in World History" Part Ill, Essence,
New York: July, 1971.
struggles during slavery. To understand 4. Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politi-
the part she played in developing and schen Oekonomie, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1953,
p. 389.
sharpening the thrust towards freedom, 5. Frederick Engels, Origin of the Family, Private
Property and The State, New York: Interna-
the broader meaning of slavery and of tional Publishers, 1942, p. 107.
American slavery in particular must be 6. Frederick Douglass, Life and Times of Freder-
ick Douglass, New York: Collier Books, 1962,
explored. p. 96.

THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971 PAGE 5

 Yet another fact would militate against open rebellions empted with such a fre-
harmony and equilibrium in the slave's re- quency that they were as much a part of
lation to his bondage: slavery was enclosed the texture of slavery as the conditions of
in a society otherwise characterized by servitude themselves. And these revolts
"free" wage-labor. Black men and women were only the tip of an iceberg: resistance
could always contrast their chains with the expressed itself in other grand modes and
nominally free status of white working peo- also in the seemingly trivial forms of
ple. This was quite literally true in such feigned illness and studied indolence.
cases where, like Frederick Douglass, they
were contracted out as wage-laborers. Un-
like the "free" white men alongside whom IF RESISTANCE was an organic ingredient

they worked, they had no right to the of slave life, it had to be directly nurtured
meager wages they earned. Such were by the social organization which the slaves
some of the many contradictions unloosed themselves improvised. The consciousness
by the effort to forcibly inject slavery into of their oppression, the conscious thmst to-
the early stages of American capitalism. wards its abolition could not have been sus-
tained without impetus from the commu-
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nity they pulled together through the sheer

THE COMBINATION of a historically super- force of their own strength. Of necessity,
this community would revolve around the
ceded slave labor system based almost ex-
clusively on race and the drive to strip realm which was furthermost removed
black people of all their social and cultural from the immediate arena of domination.
bonds would create a fateful mpture at the It could only be located in and around the
heart of the slave system itself. The slaves living quarters, the area where the basic
would not readily adopt fatalistic attitudes needs of physical life were met.
towards the conditions surrounding and In the area of production, the slaves -
ensnaring their lives. They were a people pressed into the mold of beasts of burden
who had been violently thmst into a pat- -were forcibly deprived of their humanity.
ently "unnatural" subjugation. If the slave- (And a human being thoroughly dehuman-
holders had not maintained an absolute ized, has no desire for freedom.) But the
monopoly of violence, if they had not been community gravitating around the domes-
able to rely on large numbers of their fel- tic quarters might possibly permit a
low white men - indeed the entire mling retrieval of the man and the woman in
class as well as misled working people - their fundamental humanity. \Ve can as-
to assist them in their terrorist machina- sume that in a very real material sense, it
tions, slavery would have been far less was only in domestic life -away from the
feasible than it actually proved to be. eyes and whip of the overseer - that the
The magnitude and effects of the black slaves could attempt to assert the modicum
people's defiant rejection of slavery has of freedom they still retained. It was only
not yet been fully documented and illumi- there that they might be inspired to pro-
nated. But there is more than ample evi- ject techniques of expanding it further by
dence that they consistently refused to leveling what few weapons they had
succumb to the all-encompassing dehu- against the slaveholding class whose un-
manization objectively demanded by the mitigated drive for prolit was the source
slave system. Comparatively recent studies of their misery.
have demonstrated that the few slave up- Via this path, we return to the African
risings - too spectacular to be relegated slave woman: in the living quarters, the
to oblivion by the racism of mling class major responsibilities "naturally" fell to her.
historians - were not isolated occurrences, It was the woman who was charged with
as the latter would have had us believe. keeping the "home" in order. This role was
The reality, we know now, was that these dictated by the male supremacist ideology
PAGE 6 THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, JP71
 of white society in America; it was also She was not sheltered or protected; she
woven into the patriarchal traditions of would not remain oblivious to the desperate
Africa. As her biological destiny, the struggle for existence unfolding outside the
woman bore the fruits of procreation; as "home." She was also there in the fields,
her social destiny, she cooked, sewed, alongside the man, toiling under the lash
washed, cleaned house, raised the children. from sun-up to sun-down.
Traditionally the labor of females, domestic
work is supposed to complement and con- THIS wAS ONE of the supreme ironies of
firm their inferiority. slavery: in order to approach its strategic
goal - to extract the greatest possible sur-
BuT WITH THE black slave woman, there
plus from the labor of the slaves - the
black woman had to be released from the
is a strange twist of affairs: in the infinite chains of the myth of feminity. In the
anguish of ministering to the needs of the words of W.E.B. Du Bois," ... our women
men and children around her (who were in black had freedom contemptuously
not necessarily members of her immediate thrust upon them."7 In order to function as
family), she was performing the only labor
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slave, the black woman had to be annulled

of the slave community which could not be as woman, that is, as woman in her histori-
directly and immediately claimed by the cal stance of wardship under the entire
oppressor. There was no compensation for male hierarchy. The sheer force of things
work in the fields; it served no useful pur- rendered her equal to her man.
pose for the slaves. Domestic labor was Excepting the woman's role as caretaker
the only meaningful labor for the slave of the household, male supremacist struc-
community as a whole (discounting as tures could not become deeply embedded
negligible the exceptional situations where in the internal workings of the slave sys-
slaves received some pay for their work). tem. Though the ruling class was male and
Precisely through performing the drudg- rabidly chauvinistic, the slave system could
ery which has long been a central expres- not confer upon the black man the appear-
sion of the socially conditioned inferiority ance of a privileged position vis-a-vis the
of women, the black woman in chains could black woman. The man-slave could not be
help to lay the foundation for some degree the unquestioned superior within the "fam-
of autonomy, both for herself and her men. ily" or community, for there was no such
Even as she was suffering under her unique thing as the "family provided" among the
oppression as female, she was thrust by the slaves. The attainment of slavery's intrinsic
force of circumstances into the center of goals was contingent upon the fullest and
the slave community. She was, therefore, most brutal utilization of the productive
essential to the survival of the community. capacities of every man, woman and child.
Not all people have survived enslavement; They all had to "provide" for the master.
hence her survival-oriented activities were The black woman was therefore wholly
themselves a form of resistance. Survival, integrated into the productive force.
moreover, was the prerequisite of all higher
The bell rings at four o'clock in the morn-
levels of struggle. ing and they have half an hour to get ready.
But much more remains to be said of the Men and women start together, and the wom-
black woman during slavery. The dialectics en must work as steadily as the men and per-
of her oppression will become far more form the same tasks as the men.s
complex. It is true that she was a victim of 7. W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater, Voices from With-
the myth that only the woman, with her in the Veil, New York: AMS Press, 1969, p.
diminished capacity for mental and physi- 185. . f
8 Lewis Clarke Narrative of the Suffermgs o
cal labor, should do degrading household · Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons of a Soldier of
work. Yet, the alleged benefits of the ide- the Revolution, Boston: 1846, p. 127 [Q';lote.d
by E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family m
ology of feminity did not accrue to her. the United States].
THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971 PAGE 7
 Even in the posture of motherhood - awareness of a woman confined to the
otherwise the occasion for hypocritical home. She would be prepared to ascend
adoration - the black woman was treated to the same levels of resistance which were
with not greater compassion and with no accessible to her men. Even as she per-
less severity than her man. As one slave formed her housework, the black woman's
related in a narrative of his life: role in the slave community could not be
identical to the historically evolved female
... women who had sucking children suf-
fered much from their breasts becoming full role. Stripped of the palliative feminine
of milk, the infants being left at home; they veneer which might have encouraged a
therefore could not keep up with the other passive performance of domestic tasks, she
hands: I have seen the overseer beat them was now uniquely capable of weaving into
with raw hide so that the blood and the milk
the warp and woof of domestic life a pro-
flew mingled from their breasts.9
found consciousness of resistance.
Moses Grandy, ex-slave, continues his With the contributions of strong black
description with an account of a typical women, the slave community as a whole
form of field punishment reserved for the could achieve heights unscaleable within
black woman with child: the families of the white oppressed or even
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She is compelled to lie down over a hole

within the patriarchal kinship groups of
made to receive her corpulency, and is flogged Africa. Latently or actively it was always a
with the whip, or beat with a paddle, which community of resistance. It frequently
has holes in it; at every stroke comes a blis- erupted in insurgency, but was daily ani-
ter.10 mated by the minor acts of sabotage which
The unbridled cruelty of this leveling harassed the slave master to no end. Had
process whereby the black woman was the black woman failed to rise to the
forced into equality with the black man occasion, the community of slaves could
requires no further explanation. She shared not have fully developed in this direction.
in the deformed equality of equal oppres- The slave system would have to deal with
sion. the black woman as the custodian of a
house of resistance.
The oppression of black women during
BuT OUT OF THIS deformed equality was the era of slavery, therefore, had to be
forged quite undeliberately, yet inexorably, buttressed by a level of overt ruling-class
a state of affairs which could unhamess an repression. Her routine oppression had to
immense potential in the black woman. assume an unconcealed dimension of out-
Expending indispensable labor for the en- right counter-insurgency.
richment of her oppressor, she could attain .. .. . ..
a practical awareness of the oppressor's
utter dependence on her - for the master
needs the slave far more than the slave To SAY that the oppression of black slave

needs the master. At the same time she women necessarily incorporated open forms
could realize that while her productive of counter-insurgency is not as extravagant
activity was wholly subordinated to the as it might initially appear. The penetration
will of the master, it was nevertheless proof of counter-insurgency into the day to day
of her ability to transform things. For routine of the slave master's domination
"labor is the living, shaping fire; it repre- will be considered towards the end of this
sents the impermanence of thing, their paper. First, the participation of black
temporality . . . "11
The black woman's consciousness of the 9. Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses
Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of
oppression suffered by her people was America, Boston: 1844, p. 18 [quoted by
honed in the bestial realities of daily ex- Frazier].
10. Ibid.
perience. It would not be the stunted 11. Marx, Grundrisse, p. 266.
PAGE 8 THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1911
 women in the overt and explosive upheav- time of this writing.l 3 These facts, gleaned
als which constantly rocked the slave sys- from Aptheker's works on slave revolts and
tem must be confirmed. This will be an other forms of resistance, should signal the
indication of the magnitude of her role as urgency to undertake a thorough study of
caretaker of a household of resistance - of the black woman as anti-slavery rebel. In
the degree to which she could concretely 1971 this work is far overdue.
encourage those around her to keep their Aptheker's research has disclosed the
eyes on freedom. It will also confirm the widespread existence of communities of
objective circumstances to which the slave blacks who were neither free nor in bond-
master's counter-insurgency was a response. age. Throughout the South (in South and
With the sole exceptions of Harriet Tub- North Carolina, Virginia, Louisiana, Flori-
man and Sojoumer Truth, black women of da, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama),
the slave era remain more or less en- maroon communities consisting of fugitive
shrouded in unrevealed history. And, as slaves and their descendants were "an ever
Earl Conrad has demonstrated, even "Gen- present feature" - from 1642 to 1864 -
eral Tubman's" role has been consistently of slavery. They provided " ... havens for
and grossly minimized. She was a far fugitives, served as bases for marauding
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greater warrior against slavery than is sug- expeditions against nearby plantations and,
gested by the prevalent misconception that at times, supplied leadership to planned
her only outstanding contribution was to uprisings." 14
make nineteen trips into the South, bring- Every detail of these communities was
ing over 300 slaves to their freedom. invariably determined by and steeped in
resistance, for their raison d' etre emanated
[She] was head of the Intelligence Service
in the Department of the South throughout from their perpetual assault on slavery.
the Civil War; she is the only American wom- Only in a fighting stance could the maroons
an to lead troops black and white on the field hope to secure their constantly imperiled
of battle, as she did in the Department of the freedom. As a matter of necessity, the
South . . . She was a compelling and stirring
women of those communities were com-
orator in the councils of the abolitionists and
the anti-slavP.rs, a favorite of the antislavery pelled to define themselves - no less than
conferences. She was the fellow planner with the men - through their many acts of
Douglass, Martin Delany, Wendell Phillips, resistance. Hence, throughout this brief
Gerrit S~ith and other leaders of the anti- survey the counter-attacks and heroic ef-
slavery movement.l2 forts at defense assisted by maroon women
No extensive and systematic study of the will be a recurring motif.
role of black women in resisting slavery As it will be seen, black women often
has come to my attention. It has been noted poisoned the food and set fire to the houses
that large numbers of freed black women of their masters. For those who were also
worked towards the purchase of their rela- employed as domestics these particular
tives' and friends' freedom. About the overt forms of resistance were especially
participation of women in both the well- available.
known and more obscure slave revolts, only The vast majority of the incidents to be
casual remarks have been made. It has related involve either tactically unsuccess-
been observed, for instance, that Gabriel's
wife was active in planning the rebellion 12. Earl Conrad, "I Bring You General Tubman,"
The Black Scholar, Vol. 1, No. 3-4, Jan.-Feb.,
spearheaded by her husband, but little 1970, p. 4.
else has been said about her. 13. In February, 1949, Herbert Aptheker published
an essay in Masses and Mainstream entitled
"The Negro Woman." As yet I have been un-
THE SKETCH which follows is based in its
able to obtain it.
14. Herbert Aptheker, "Slave Guerrilla Warfare"
in To Be Free, Studies in American Negro His-
entirety on the works of Herbert Aptheker, tory, New York: International Publishers, 1969
the only resources available to me at the (1st ed., 1948 ), p. 11.

DECEMBER, 1971 PAGE 9

THE BLACK SCHOLAR
 ful assaults or eventually thwarted at- In the thick of the Colonies' war with
tempts at defense. In all likelihood, England, a group of defiant slave women
numerous successes were achieved, even and men were arrested in Saint Andrew's
against the formidable obstacles posed by Parish, Georgia in 1774. But before they
the slave system. Many of these were prob- were captured, they had already brought a
ably unpublicized even at the time of their number of slave owners to their death. 21
occurrence, lest they provide encourage- The maroon communities have been
ment to the rebellious proclivities of other briefly described; from 1782 to 1784,
slaves and, for other slaveholders, an oc- Louisiana was a constant target of maroon
casion for fear and despair. attacks. When twenty-five of this commu-
nity's members were finally taken prisoner,
men and women alike were all severely
DuRING THE early years of the slave era punished. 22
( 1708) a rebellion broke out in New York.
Among its participants were surely many
women, for one, along with three men, As CAN BE inferred from previous exam-
was executed in retaliation for the killing ple, the North did not escape the tremen-
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of seven whites. It may not be entirely dous impact of fighting black women. In
insignificant that while the men were Albany, New York, two women were
hanged, she was heinously burned alive. 15 among three slaves executed for anti-slav-
In the same colony, women played an ery activities in 1794. 23 The respect and
active role in a 1712 uprising in the course admiration accorded the black woman
of which slaves, with their guns, clubs and fighter by her people is strikingly illus-
knives, killed members of the slaveholding trated by an incident which transpired in
class and managed to wound others. While York, Pennsylvania: when, during the early
some of the insurgents - among them a months of 1803, Margaret Bradley was con-
pregnant woman - were captured, others victed of attempting to poison two white
- including a woman - committed suicide people, the black inhabitants of the area
rather than surrender.t6 revolted en masse.
"In New Orleans one day in 1730 a They made several attempts to destroy the
woman slave received 'a violent blow from town by fire and succeeded, within a period
a French soldier for refusing to obey him' of three weeks, in burning eleven buildings.
and in her anger shouted 'that the French Patrols were established, strong guards set up,
should not long insult Negroes'." 17 As it the militia dispatched to the scene of the un-
rest . . . and a reward of three hundred dollars
was later disclosed, she and undoubtedly offered for the capture of the insurrection-
many other women, had joined in a vast ists.24
plan to destroy slaveholders. Along with
eight men, this dauntless woman was exe- A successful elimination by poisoning of
cuted. Two years later, Louisiana pro- several "of our respectable men" (said a
nounced a woman and four men leaders letter to the governor of North Carolina)
of a planned rebellion. They were all exe- was met by the execution of four or five
cuted and, in a typically savage gesture, slaves. One was a woman who was burned
their heads publicly displayed on poles.ts
Charleston, South Carolina condemned a 15. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Re-
volts, New York: International Publishers, 1970
black woman to die in 1740 for arson,t9 a (1st ed., 1943), p. 169.
form of sabotage, as earlier noted, fre- 16. Ibid., p. 173.
17. Ibid., p. 181.
quently carried out by women. In Mary- 18. Ibid., p. 182.
land, for instance, a slave woman was 19. Ibid., p. 190.
20. Ibid., p. 145.
executed in 1776 for having destroyed by 21. Ibid., p. 201.
fire her master's house, his outhouses and 22. Ibid., p. 207.
tobacco house.2o 23. Ibid., p. 215.
24. Ibid., p. 239.
PAGE JO THE BLACK SCHOLAR. DECEMBER., J91J
 alive. 2s In 1810, two women and a man posse captured all the slaves. Of the six
were accused of arson in Virginia.26 leaders sentenced to death, one was a
In 1811 North Carolina was the scene of woman. She was first permitted, for reasons
a confrontation between a maroon com- of economy, to give birth to her child. 33
munity and a slave-catching posse. Local Afterwards, she was publicly hanged.
newspapers reported that its members ''had
bid defiance to any force whatever and
were resolved to stand their ground." Of
THE SLAYE CLASS in Louisiana, as noted
earlier, was not unaware of the formidable
the entire community," two were killed, one threat posed by the black woman who
wounded and two - both women - were chose to fight. It responded accordingly:
captured.27 in 1846 a posse of slave owners ambushed
a community of maroons, killing one
APTHEKER's Documentary History of the woman and wounding two others. A black
Negro People in the United States con- man was also assassinated. 34 Neither could
tains a portion of the transcript of an 1812 the border states escape the recognition
confession of a slave rebel in Virginia. that slave women were eager to battle for
The latter divulged the information that their freedom. In 1850 in the state of Mis-
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a black woman brought him into a plan to souri, "about thirty slaves, men and women,
kill their master and that yet another black of four different owners, had armed them-
woman had been charged with concealing selves with knives, clubs and three guns
him after the killing occurred.2s and set out for a free state." Their pur-
In 1816 it was discovered that a com- suers, who could unleash a far more pow-
munity of three hundred escaped slaves - erful violence than they, eventually
men, women, children - had occupied a thwarted their plans. 35
fort in Florida. After the U.S. Army was This factual survey of but a few of the
dispatched with instructions to destroy the open acts of resistance in which black
community, a ten day siege terminated women played major roles will close with
with all but forty of the three hundred two further events. When a maroon camp
dead. All the slaves fought to the very in Mississippi was destroyed in 1857, four
end,29 In the course of a similar, though of its members did not manage to elude
smaller confrontation between maroons capture, one of whom was a fugitive slave
and a militia group (in South Carolina, woman.36 All of them, women as well as
1826), a woman and a child were killed. 10 men, must have waged a valiant fight.
Still another maroon community was at- Finally, there occurred in October, 1862 a
tacked in Mobile, Alabama in 1837. Its skirmish between maroons and a scouting
inhabitants, men and women alike, resisted party of Confederate soldiers in the state
fiercely - according to local newspapers, of Virginia.37 This time, however, the ma-
"fighting like Spartans."31 roons were the victors and it may well
Convicted of having been among those have been that some of the many women
who, in 1829, had been the cause of a helped to put the soldiers to death.
devastating fire in Augusta, Georgia, a 0 0 0 0

black woman was "executed, dissected,

and exposed" (according to an English 25. Ibid., pp. 241-242.
26. Ibid., p. 247.
visitor). Moreover, the execution of yet 27. Ibid., _p. 251.
another woman, about to give birth, was 28. Aptheker, Documentary History, pp. 55-57.
imminent.32 During the same year, a group 29. Aptheker, Slave Revolts, p. 259.
30. Ibid., p. 277.
of slaves, being led from Maryland to be 31. Ibid., p. 259.
sold in the South, had apparently planned 32. Ibid., p. 281.
33. Ibid., _p. 487.
to kill the traders and make their way to 34. Aptheker, "Guerrilla Warfare," p. 27.
freedom. One of the traders was success- 35. Aptheker, Slave Revolts, p. 342.
36. Aptheker, "Guerrilla Warfare," p. 28.
fully done away with, but eventually a 37. Ibid., p. 29.
THE SLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971 PAGE 11
 THE OPPRESSION of slave women had to plained as an outgrowth of the male
assume dimensions of open counter-insur- supremacy of Southern culture: the purity
gency. Against the background of the facts of white womanhood could not be violated
presented above, it would be difficult in- by the aggressive sexual activity desired
deed to refute this contention. As for those by the white male. His instinctual urges
who engaged in open battle, they were no would find expression in his relationships
less ruthlessly punished than slave men. with his property - the black slave woman,
It would even appear that in many cases who would have to become his unwilling
they may have suffered penalties which concubine. No doubt there is an element
were more excessive than those meted out of truth in these statements, but it is
to the men. On occasion, when men were equally important to unearth the meaning
hanged, the women were burned alive. If of these sexual abuses from the vantage
such practices were widespread, their logic point of the woman who was assaulted.
would be clear. They would be terrorist In keeping with the theme of these re-
methods designed to dissuade other black flections, it will be submitted that the slave
women from following the examples of master's sexual domination of the black
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their fighting sisters. If all black women woman contained an unveiled element of
rose up alongside their men, the institution counter-insurgency. To understand the
of slavery would be in difficult straits. basis for this assertion, the dialectical
It is against the backdrop of her role as moments of the slave woman's oppression
fighter that the routine oppression of the must be restated and their movement re-
slave woman must be explored once more. captured. The prime factor, it has been
If she was burned, hanged, broken on the said, was the total and violent expropria-
wheel; her head paraded on poles before tion of her labor with no compensation
her oppressed brothers and sisters, she must save the pittance necessary for bare exis-
have also felt the edge of this counter- tence.
insurgency as a fact of her daily existence. Secondly, as female, she was the house-
The slave system would not only have to keeper of the living quarters. In this sense,
make conscious efforts to stifle the ten- she was already doubly oppressed. How-
dencies towards acts of the kind described ever, having been wrested from passive,
above; it would be no less necessary to "feminine" existence by the sheer force of
stave off escape attempts (escapes to ma- things - literally by forced labor - con-
roon country!) and all the various forms of fining domestic tasks were incommensur-
sabotage within the system. Feigning ill- able with what she had become. That is to
ness was also resistance as were work slow- say, by virtue of her participation in pro:
downs and actions destructive to the crops. duction, she would not act the part of the
The more extensive these acts, the more the passive female, but could experience the
slaveholder's profits would tend to dimin- same need as her men to challenge the con-
ish. ditions of her subjugation. As the center of
While a detailed study of the myriad domestic life, the only life at all removed
modes in which this counter-insurgency from the arena of exploitation, and thus
was manifested can and should be con- as an important source of survival, the
ducted, the following reflections will focus black woman could play a pivotal role in
on a single aspect of the slave woman's nurturing the thrust towards freedom.
oppression, particularly prominent in its
brutality.
THE SLAVE MASTER would attempt to
thwart this process. He knew that as fe-
MuCH HAS BEEN said about the sexual male, this slave woman could be particu-
abuses to which the black woman was larly vulnerable in her sexual existence.
forced to submit. They are generally ex- Although he would not pet her and deck
PAGE 12 THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1911
 her out in frills, the white master could As A DIRECT ATIACK on the black female
endeavor to reestablish her femaleness by as potential insurgent, this sexual repres-
reducing her to the level of her biological sion finds its parallels in virtually every
being. Aspiring with his sexual assaults to historical situation where the woman ac-
establish her as a female animal, he would tively challenges oppression. Thus, Franz
be striving to destroy her proclivities to- Fanon could say of the Algerian woman:
wards resistance. Of the sexual relations "A woman led away by soldiers who comes
of animals, taken at their abstract biological back a week later - it is not necessary to
level (and not in terms of their quite dif- question her to understand that she has
ferent social potential for human beings), been violated dozens of times."40
Simone de Beauvoir says the following: In its political contours, the rape of the
black woman was not exclusively an attack
It is unquestionably the male who takes the upon her. Indirectly, its target was also
female - she is taken. Often the word applies
literally, for whether by means of special
the slave community as a whole. In launch-
organs or through superior strength, the male ing the sexual war on the woman, the
seizes her and holds her in place; he performs master would not only assert his sovereign-
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the copulatory movements; and, among in- ty over a critically important figure of the
sects, birds, and mammals, he penetrates ... slave community, he would also be aiming
Her body becomes a resistance to be broken
through .. ,38
a blow against the black man. The latter's
instinct to protect his female relations and
The act of copulation, reduced by the comrades (now stripped of its male su-
white man to an animal-like act, would be premacist implications) would be frus-
symbolic of the effort to conquer the re- trated and violated to the extreme. Placing
sistance the black woman could unloose. the white male's sexual barbarity in bold
In confronting the black woman as ad- relief, Du Bois cries out in a rhetorical
versary in a sexual contest, the master vein:
would be subjecting her to the most ele- I shall forgive the South much in its final
mental form of terrorism distinctively judgement day: I shall forgive its slavery, for
suited for the female: rape. Given the al- slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its
ready terroristic texture of plantation life, fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remem-
bering that struggle with tender tears; I shall
it would be as potential victim of rape that forgive its so-called 'pride of race,' the pas-
the slave woman would be most unguarded. sion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old,
Further, she might be most conveniently laughable strutting and posing; but one thing
manipulable if the master contrived a ran- I shall never forgive, neither in this world
som system of sorts, forcing her to pay with nor the world to come: its wanton and con-
tinued and persistent insulting of the black
her body for food, diminished severity in womanhood which it sought and seeks to pros-
treatment, the safety of her children, etc. titute to its lust.41
The integration of rape into the sparsely
The retaliatory import of the rape for
furnished legitimate social life of the slaves
the black man would be entrapment in an
harks back to the feudal "right of the first
untenable situation. Clearly the master
night," the jus primae noctis. The feudal
hoped that once the black man was struck
lord manifested and reinforced his domi-
by his manifest inability to rescue his
nation over the serfs by asserting his
women from sexual assaults of the master,
authority to have sexual intercourse with
he would begin to experience deep-seated
all the females. The right itself referred
doubts about his ability to resist at all.
specifically to all freshly married women.
But while the right to the first night even- 38. Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, New
tually evolved into the institutionalized York: Bantam Books, 1961, pp. 18-19.
39. August Be bel, Women and Socialism, New
"virgin tax,"39 the American slaveholder's York: Socialist Literature Co., 1910, p. 66-69.
sexual domination never lost its openly 40. Franz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, New York:
Grove Press, 1967, p. 119.
terroristic character. 41. Du Bois, Darkwater, p. 172.
THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, J97J PAGE J3
 CERTAINLY THE wholesale rape of slave AN INTRICATE and savage web of oppres-
women must have had a profound impact sion intruded at every moment into the
on the slave community. Yet it could not black woman's life during slavery. Yet a
succeed in its intrinsic aim of stifling the single theme appears at every juncture:
impetus towards struggle. Countless black the woman transcending, refusing, fighting
women did not passively submit to these back, asserting herself over and against
abuses, as the slaves in general refused to terrifying obstacles. It was not her com-
passively accept their bondage. The strug- rade brother against whom her incredible
gles of the slave woman in the sexual realm strength was directed. She fought along-
were a continuation of the resistance inter- side her man, accepting or providing guid-
laced in the slave's daily existence. As ance according to her talents and the
such, this was yet another form of insur- nature of their tasks. She was in no sense
gency, a response to a politically tinged an authoritarian figure; neither her domes-
sexual repression. tic role nor her acts of resistance could
Even E. Franklin Frazier (who goes out relegate the man to the shadows. On the
of his way to defend the thesis that "the contrary, she herself had just been forced
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master in his mansion and his colored to leave behind the shadowy realm of fe-
mistress in her special house nearby repre- male passitivity in order to assume her
sented the final triumph of social ritual in rightful place beside the insurgent male.
the presence of the deepest feelings of hu-
man solidarity"42 ) could not entirely ignore
the black woman who fought back. He THIS PORTRAIT cannot, of course, presume

notes: "That physical compulsion was to represent every individual slave woman.
necessary at times to secure submission on It is rather a portrait of the potentials and
the part of black women ... is supported possibilities inherent in the situation to
by historical evidence and has been pre- which slave women were anchored. In-
served in the tradition of Negro families," 43 variably there were those who did not
realize this potential. There were those
The sexual contest was one of many
who were indifferent and a few who were
arenas in which the black woman had to
outright traitors. But certainly they were
prove herself as a warrior against oppres-
not the vast majority. The image of black
sion. What Frazier unwillingly concedes
women enchaining their men, cultivating
would mean that countless children brutal-
ly fathered by whites were conceived in the relationships with the oppressor is a cruel
fabrication which must be called by its
thick of battle. Frazier himself cites the
story of a black woman whose great grand- right name. It is a dastardly ideological
weapon designed to impair our capacity
mother, a former slave, would describe
with great zest the battles behind all her for resistance today by foisting upon us
numerous scars - that is, all save one. In the ideal of male supremacy.
response to questions concerning the unex- According to a time-honored principle,
plained scar, she had always simply said: advanced by Marx, Lenin, Fanon and
numerous other theorists, the status of
"White men are as low as dogs, child, stay
women in any given society is a barometer
away from them." The mystery was not measuring the overall level of social de-
unveiled until after the death of this brave velopment. As Fanon has masterfully
woman: "She received that scar at the shown, the strength and efficacy of social
hands of her master's youngest son, a boy
of about eighteen years at the time she
conceived their child, my grandmother 42. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the
United States, Chicago: U. of Chicago Press,
Ellen."44 1966 (1st ed., 1939), p. 69.
0 0 0 0 43. Ibid., p. 53.
44. Ibid., pp. 53-54.
PAGE 14 THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1911
 struggles - and especially revolutionary levels of resistance historically maintained
movements - bear an immediate relation- by black people and thus the historical
ship to the range and quality of female function of the Black Liberation Struggle
participation. as harbinger of change throughout the
society are due in part to the greater
objective equality between the black man
THE MEANING of this principle is strik- and the black woman. Du Bois put it
ingly illustrated by the role of the black this way:
woman during slavery. Attendant to the
In the great rank and file of our five mil-
indiscriminant brutal pursuit of profit, the lion women, we have the up-working of new
slave woman attained a correspondingly revolutionary ideals, which must in time have
brutal status of equality. But in practice, vast influence on the thought and action of
she could work up a fresh content for this this land.4S
deformed equality by inspiring and partici- Official and unofficial attempts to blunt
pating in acts of resistance of every form the effects of the egalitarian tendencies as
and calor. She could turn the weapon of between the black man and woman should
equality in struggle against the avaricious
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come as no surprise. The matriarch con-

slave system which had engendered the cept, embracing the cliched "female cas-
mere caricature of equality in oppression. trator," is, in the last instance, an open
The black woman's activities increased the weapon of ideological warfare. Black men
total incidence of anti-slavery assaults. But and women alike remain its potential vic-
most important, without consciously rebel- tims - men unconsciously lunging at the
lious black women, the theme of resistance woman, equating her with the myth;
could not have become so thoroughly inter- women sinking back into the shadows, lest
twined in the fabric of daily existence. The an aggressive posture resurrect the myth in
status of black women within the commu- themselves.
nity of slaves was definitely a barometer
indicating the overall potential for resis-
tance. THE MYTII MUST be consciously repudi-
ated as myth and the black woman in her
true historical contours must be resur-
THIS PROCESS did not end with the formal rected. We, the black women of today,
dissolution of slavery. Under the impact of must accept the full weight of a legacy
racism, the black woman has been continu- wrought in blood by our mothers in chains.
ally constrained to inject herself into the Our fight, while identical in spirit, reflects
desperate struggle for existence. She - different conditions and thus implies dif-
like her man - has been compelled to ferent paths of struggle. But as heirs to a
work for wages, providing for her family tradition of supreme perserverance and
as she was previously forced to provide heroic resistance, we must hasten to take
for the slaveholding class. The infinitely our place wherever our people are forging
onerous nature of this equality should on towards freedom.
never be overlooked. For the black woman
has always also remained harnessed to the
chores of the household. Yet, she could
never be exhaustively defined by her uni-
quely "female" responsibilities.
As a result, black women have made
significant contributions to struggles
against the racism and the dehumanizing
exploitation of a wrongly organized society.
In fact, it would appear that the intense 45. Du Bois, Darkwater, p. 185.

THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971 PAGE 15