sign in sign up
<<
Home , Angela Davis, Herbert Aptheker, The Slave Community, Woman in Chains

THE BLACK WOMAN'S ROLE IN THE COMMUNITY OF SLAVES

Cook Collection BY .

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 facing three capital charges of murder, and all political prisoners. Her book, // They Come kidnapping, and conspiracy to commit both. The «'n the Morning: Voices of Resistance, edited by charges stem from an abortive escape by black Angela Davis and , was published prisoners from the Marin County Court House, October 1971 by Third Press, , 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 Department Aptheker, , Margaret Burnham, at the in Los Angeles. Ericka Huggins, Ruchell Magee, Howard Moore, She was fired twice by the University's Regents: Iluey P. Newton, Bobby Scale and The Soledad once because she is a member of the Communist Brothers.

INTRODUCTION

r was immensely pleased to learn of 'S plans to devote -I 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 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 . 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 Mack 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 emerg»e from the ranks of our liberation movement — to Georg*•*e 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 rime ago: a systematic critique of his past misconceptions about black women and of their 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. 1 THE BLACK SCHOLAR DECEMBER, 1971 J HE MATRIABCHAL 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 propagandist^ 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 as a people.) An accurate por- the dwelling of his grandmother, of whom trait of the African woman in bondage he would later say: "She was to me a must debunk the myth of die matriarchate. mother and a father."1" 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, HEBE 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 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.** 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 aU its ranting and raving about motherhood and the family, Hitler's regime acknowledge symbols of authority — fe- 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 to reduce it to a biological unit and to force its might eventually unleash their "power" 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. J. HE AMERICAN brand of slavery strove la. Herbert Aptheker, ed., A Documentary His- tory of the Negro People in the , toward a rigidified disorganization in fam- New York: The Citadel Press, 1969 (1st ed., ily We, just as it had to proscribe all poten- 1951), p. 272. 2. Andrew Billingsley, Black Families in White tial social structures within which black America, Englewood, New Jersey: Prentice- people might forge a collective and con- Hall, Inc., 1968, p. 61. This slave went on to describe the vari- 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 as well, Karl Marx had the fol- producing the maximum number of healthy lowing to say: child-slaves. In the words of John Henrik Clarke, The slave stands in absolutely no relation 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 lawed and permitted to exist only when it slave as of the serf, which is placed in the benefited the slave-master. Maintenance of category of inorganic condition of production the slave family as a family unit benefited the alongside the other natural beings, e.g. cattle, slave owners only when, and to the extent or regarded as an appendage of the earth.4 that such unions created new slaves who could be exploited.3 The bondsman's existence as a natural 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- structures within which the mother exer- meshed in what appears to be a natural cises decisive authority. It is cruel because state of affairs, the attitude of the slave, to it ignores the profound traumas the black a greater or lesser degree, would be an woman must have experienced when she acquiescence in his subjugation. Engels had to surrender her child-bearing to alien points out that in Athens, the state could and predatory economic interests. depend on a police force consisting en- Even the broadest construction of the tirely of slaves.5 matriarch concept would not render it ap- The fabric of American slavery differed 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 be contested. Even if she had done no But there were no pre-existent social struc- more, her deeds would still be laudable, tures or cultural dictates which might in- But her concern and struggles for physical duce reconciliation to the circumstances of survival, while clearly important, did not their bondage. On the contrary, Africans constitute her most outstanding contribu- had been uprooted from their natural en- tions. It will be submitted that by virtue vironment, their social relations, their cul- of the brutal force of circumstances, the ture. No legitimate socio-cultural surround- black woman was assigned the mission ings would be permitted to develop and 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 " Part III, Essence, struggles during slavery. To understand New York: July, 1971. 4. Karl Marx, Grundrisse der Kritik der Politi- the part she played in developing and schen Oekonomie, Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1953, sharpening the thrust towards freedom, p. 389. 5. Frederick Engels, Origin of the Family, Private the broader meaning of slavery and of Property and The State, New York: Interna- American slavery in particular must be tional Publishers, 1942, p. 107. 6. , Life and Times of Freder- explored. ick Douglass, New York: Collier Books, 1962, p. 96.

PAGE 3 1

who had been violently thrust into a pat- ently "unnatural" subjugation. If the slave- holders had not maintained an absolute monopoly of violence, if they had not been able to rely on large numbers of their fel- low white men — indeed the entire ruling class as well as misled working people — to assist them in their terrorist machina- tions, slavery would have been far less feasible than it actually proved to be. The magnitude and effects of the black people's defiant rejection of slavery has not yet been fully documented and illumi- nated. But there is more than ample evi- dence that they consistently refused to succumb to the all-encompassing dehu- manization objectively demanded by the slave system. Comparatively recent studies have demonstrated that the few slave up- risings — too spectacular to be relegated to oblivion by the of ruling class historians — were not isolated occurrences, as the latter would have had us believe. The reality, we know now, was that these open rebellions erupted with such a fre- quency that they were as much a part of Yet another fact would militate against the texture of slavery as the conditions of harmony and equilibrium in the slave's re- servitude themselves. And these revolts lation to his bondage: slavery was enclosed were only the tip of an iceberg: resistance in a society otherwise characterized by expressed itself in other grand modes and "free" wage-labor. Black men and women also in the seemingly trivial forms of could always contrast their chains with the feigned illness and studied indolence. nominally free status of white working peo- ple. This was quite literally true in such F RESISTANCE was an organic ingredient cases where, like Frederick Douglass, they I of slave life, it had to be directly nurtured were contracted out as wage-laborers. Un- by the social organization which the slaves like the "free" white men alongside whom themselves improvised. The consciousness they worked, they had no right to the of their oppression, the conscious thrust to- meager wages they earned. Such were wards its abolition could not have been sus- some of the many contradictions unloosed tained without impetus from the commu- by the effort to forcibly inject slavery into nity they pulled together through the sheer the early stages of American capitalism. force of their own strength. Of necessity, this community would revolve around the J HE COMBINATION of a historically super- realm which was furthermost removed ceded slave labor system based almost ex- from the immediate arena of domination. clusively on race and the drive to strip It could only be located in and around the black people of all their social and cultural living quarters, the area where the basic bonds would create a fateful rupture at the needs of physical life were met. heart of the slave system itself. The slaves In the area of production, the slaves — would not readily adopt fatalistic attitudes pressed into the mold of beasts of burden towards the conditions surrounding and — were forcibly deprived of their humanity. ensnaring their lives. They were a people (And a human being thoroughly dehuman- PAGE 4 ized, has no desire for freedom.) But the help to lay the foundation for some degree community gravitating around the domes- of autonomy, both for herself and her men. tic quarters might possibly permit a Even as she was suffering under her unique retrieval of the man and the woman in oppression as female, she was thrust by the their fundamental humanity. We can as- force of circumstances into the center of sume that in a very real material sense, it the slave community. She was, therefore, was only in domestic life — away from the essential to the survival of the community. eyes and whip of the overseer — that the Not all people have survived enslavement; slaves could attempt to assert the modicum hence her survival-oriented activities were of freedom they still retained. It was only themselves a form of resistance. Survival, there that they might be inspired to pro- moreover, was the prerequisite of all higher ject techniques of expanding it further by levels of struggle. leveling what few weapons they had But much more remains to be said of the against the slaveholding class whose un- black woman during slavery. The dialectics mitigated drive for profit was the source of her oppression will become far more of their misery. complex. It is true that she was a victim of Via this path, we return to the African the myth that only the woman, with her slave woman: in the living quarters, the diminished capacity for mental and physi- major responsibilities "naturally" fell to her. cal labor, should do degrading household It was the woman who was charged with work. Yet, the alleged benefits of the ide- keeping the "home" in order. This role was ology of feminity did not accrue to her. dictated by the male supremacist ideology She was not sheltered or protected; she of white society in, America; it was also would not remain oblivious to the desperate woven into the patriarchal traditions of struggle for existence unfolding outside the Africa. As her biological destiny, the "home." She was also there in the fields, woman bore the fruits of procreation; as alongside the man, toiling under the lash her social destiny, she cooked, sewed, from sun-up to sun-down. washed, cleaned house, raised the children. Traditionally the labor of females, domestic J.HIS WAS ONE of the supreme ironies of work is supposed to complement and con- firm their inferiority. slavery: in order to approach its strategic goal — to extract the greatest possible sur- plus from the labor of the slaves — the B>U, T WITH THE black slave woman, there 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 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- 3 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 the unquestioned superior within the "fam- PAGES ily" or community, for there was no such , ex-slave, continues his thing as the "family provided" among the description with an account of a typical slaves. The attainment of slavery's intrinsic form of field punishment reserved for the goals was contingent upon the fullest and black woman with child: most brutal utilization of the productive She is compelled to lie down over a hole capacities of every man, woman and child. made to receive her corpulency, and is flogged They all had to "provide" for the master. with the whip, or beat with a paddle, which The black woman was therefore wholly has holes in it; at every stroke conies a blis- integrated into the productive force. ter. •<> The bell rings at four o'clock in the morn- The unbridled cruelty of this leveling ing and they have half an hour to get ready. process whereby the black woman was Men and women start together, and the wom- en must work as steadily as the men and per- forced into equality with the black man form the same tasks as the men.8 requires no further explanation. She shared Even in the posture of motherhood — in the deformed equality of equal oppres- otherwise the occasion for hypocritical sion. adoration — the black woman was treated with not greater compassion and with no B>u, r OUT OK THIS deformed equality was less severity than her man. As one slave forged quite undeliberately, yet inexorably, related in a narrative of his life: a state of affairs which could unharness an . . . women who had sucking children suf- immense potential in the black woman. fered much from their breasts becoming full Expending indispensable labor for the en- of milk, the infants' being left at home; they richment of her oppressor, she could attain therefore could not keep up with the other hands: I have seen the overseer beat them a practical awareness of the oppressor's with raw hide so that the blood and the milk utter dependence on her — for the master flew mingled from their breasts.9 needs the slave far more than the slave needs the master. At the same time she could realize that while her productive activity was wholly subordinated to the will of the master, it was nevertheless proof of her ability to transform things. For "labor is the living, shaping fire; it repre- sents the impermanence of thing, their temporality . . . "n The black woman's consciousness of the oppression suffered by her people was honed in the bestial realities of daily ex- perience. It would not be the stunted

7. W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater, Voices from With- in the Veil, New York: AMS Press, 1969, p. 185. 8. , Narrative of the Sufferings of Lewis and Milton Clarke, Sons of a Soldier of the Revolution, Boston: 1848, p. 127 [Quoted by E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the United States]. 9. Moses Grandy, Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy; Late a Slave in the United States of America, Boston: 1844, p. 18 [quoted by Frazier]. 10. Ibid. 11. Marx, Gnindrisse, p. 266.

Harriet Tubman. bat-known "conductor" of the , guided slaves as far north as to gain their freedom. PAGE 6 awareness of a woman confined to the eyes on freedom. It will also confirm the home. She would be prepared to ascend objective circumstances to which the slave to the same levels of resistance which were master's counter-insurgency was a response. accessible to her men. Even as she per- With the sole exceptions of Harriet Tub- formed her housework, the black woman's man and , black women of role in the slave community could not be the slave era remain more or less en- identical to the historically evolved female shrouded in unrevealed history. And, as role. Stripped of the palliative feminine Earl Conrad has demonstrated, even "Gen- veneer which might have encouraged a eral Tubman's" role has been consistently passive performance of domestic tasks, she and grossly minimized. She was a far was now uniquely capable of weaving into greater warrior against slavery than is sug- the warp and woof of domestic life a pro- gested by the prevalent misconception that found consciousness of resistance. her only outstanding contribution was to With the contributions of strong black make nineteen trips into the South, bring- women, the slave community as a whole ing over 300 slaves to their freedom. could achieve heights unscaleable within the families of the white oppressed or even [She] was head of the Intelligence Service in the Department of the South throughout within the patriarchal kinship groups of the Civil War; she is the only American wom- Africa. Latently or actively it was always a an to lead troops black and white on the field community of resistance. It frequently of battle, as she did in the Department of the erupted in insurgency, but was daily ani- South . . . She was a compelling and stirring orator in the councils of the abolitionists and mated by the minor acts of sabotage which the anti-slavers, a favorite of the antislavery harassed the slave master to no end. Had conferences. She was the fellow planner with the black woman failed to rise to the Douglass, Martin Delany, Wendell Phillips, occasion, the community of slaves could Geirit Smith and other leaders of the anti- not have fully developed in this direction. slavery movement.12 The slave system would have to deal with No extensive and systematic study of the the black woman as the custodian of a role of black women in resisting slavery house of resistance. has come to my attention. It has been noted The oppression of black women during that large numbers of freed black women the era of slavery, therefore, had to be worked towards the purchase of their rela- buttressed by a level of overt ruling-class tives' and friends' freedom. About the repression. Her routine oppression had to participation of women in both the well- assume an unconcealed dimension of out- known and more obscure slave revolts, only right counter-insurgency. casual remarks have been made. It has been observed, for instance, that Gabriel's wife was active in planning the rebellion J.o SAY that the oppression of black slave spearheaded by her husband, but little women necessarily incorporated open forms else has been said about her. of counter-insurgency is not as extravagant as it might initially appear. The penetration J.HE SKETCH which follows is based in its of counter-insurgency into the day to day entirety on the works of Herbert Aptheker, routine of the slave master's domination the only resources available to me at the will be considered towards the end of this time of this writing.13 These facts, gleaned paper. First, the participation of black from Aptheker's works on slave revolts and women in the overt and explosive upheav- other forms of resistance, should signal the als which constantly rocked the slave sys- urgency to undertake a thorough study of tem must be confirmed. This will be an the black woman as anti-slavery rebel. In indication of the magnitude of her role as 1971 this work is far overdue. caretaker of a household of resistance — of the degree to which she could concretely 12. Earl Conrad, "I Bring You General Tubman," encourage those around her to keep their The Black Scholar, Vol. 1, No. 3-4, Jan.-Feb., PAGE 7 1970, p. 4. Aptheker's research has disclosed the of seven whites. It may not be entirely widespread existence of communities of insignificant that while the men were blacks who were neither free nor in bond- hanged, she was heinously burned alive.15 age. Throughout the South (in South and In the same colony, women played an North Carolina, , Louisiana, Flori- active role in a 1712 uprising in the course da, , Mississippi and ), of which slaves, with their guns, clubs and maroon communities consisting of fugitive knives, killed members of the slaveholding slaves and their descendants were "an ever class and managed to wound others. While present feature" -- from 1642 to 1864 - some of the insurgents — among them a of slavery. They provided "... havens for pregnant woman — were captured, others fugitives, served as bases for marauding — including a woman — committed suicide expeditions against nearby plantations and, rather than surrender.16 at times, supplied leadership to planned "In New Orleans one day in 1730 a uprisings."14 woman slave received 'a violent blow from Every detail of these communities was a French soldier for refusing to obey him' invariably determined by and steeped in and in her anger shouted 'that the French resistance, for their raison d'etre emanated should not long insult Negroes'."17 As it from their perpetual assault on slavery. was later disclosed, she and undoubtedly Only in a fighting stance could the maroons many other women, had joined in a vast hope to secure their constantly imperiled plan to destroy slaveholders. Along with freedom. As a matter of necessity, the eight men, this dauntless woman was exe- women of those communities were com- cuted. Two years later, Louisiana pro- pelled to define themselves — no less than nounced a woman and four men leaders the men - - through their many acts of of a planned rebellion. They were all exe- resistance. Hence, throughout this brief cuted and, in a typically savage gesture, survey the counter-attacks and heroic ef- their heads publicly displayed on poles.18 forts at defense assisted by maroon women Charleston, South Carolina condemned a will be a recurring motif. black woman to die in 1740 for arson,19 a As it will be seen, black women often form of sabotage, as earlier noted, fre- poisoned the food and set fire to the houses quently carried out by women. In Mary- of their masters. For those who were also land, for instance, a slave woman was employed as domestics these particular executed in 1776 for having destroyed by overt forms of resistance were especially fire her master's house, his outhouses and available. tobacco house.20 The vast majority of the incidents to be In the thick of the Colonies' war with related involve either tactically unsuccess- England, a group of defiant slave women ful assaults or eventually thwarted at- and men were arrested in Saint Andrew's tempts at defense. In all likelihood, Parish, Georgia in 1774. But before thev numerous successes were achieved, even against the formidable obstacles posed by 13. In February, 1949, Herbert Aptheker published the slave system. Many of these were prob- an essay in Masses and Mainstream entitled ably unpublicized even at the time of their "The Negro Woman." As yet I have been un- occurrence, lest they provide encourage- able to obtain it. 14. Herbert Aptheker, "Slave Guerrilla Warfare" ment to the rebellious proclivities of other in To Be Free, Studies in American Negro His- slaves and, for other slaveholders, an oc- tory, New York: , 1969 (1st ed., 1948), p. 11. casion for fear and despair. 15. Herbert Aptheker, American Negro Slave Re- volts, New York: International Publishers, 1970 (1st ed., 1943), p. 169. "URING THE early years of the slave era 16. Ibid., p. 173. 17. Ibid., p. 181. (1708) a rebellion broke out in New York. 18. Ibid., p. 182. Among its participants were surely many 19. Ibid., p. 190. women, for one, along with three men, 20. Ibid., p. 145. was executed in retaliation for the killing PAGE 6 All the Pretty Little Horses

Hushaby, don't you cry, Go to sleepy, little baby. When you wake, you shall have cake, And all the pretty little horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, Coach and six-a little horses.

Way down yonder in the meadow, There's a poor little lambie; The bees and the butterflies pickin' out his eyes. The poor little thing cries, "Mammy."

Hushaby, don't you cry, Go to sleepy, little baby.

"All the Pretty Little Horses" is an authentic slave lullaby; it reveals the bitter feelings of Negro mothers who had to watch over their white charges while neglecting their own children.

were captured, they had already brought a A successful elimination by poisoning of number of slave owners to their death.21 several "of our respectable men" (said a The maroon communities have been letter to the governor of North Carolina) briefly described; from 1782 to 1784, was met by the execution of four or five Louisiana was a constant target of maroon slaves. One was a woman who was burned attacks. When twenty-five of this commu- alive.23 In 1810, two women and a man nity's members were finally taken prisoner, were accused of arson in Virginia.26 men and women alike were all severely In 1811 North Carolina was the scene of punished.22 a confrontation between a maroon com- munity and a slave-catching posse. Local newspapers reported that its members "had /\ CAN BE inferred from previous exam- bid defiance to any force whatever and ple, the North did not escape the tremen- were resolved to stand their ground." Of dous impact of fighting black women. In the entire community, two were killed, one Albany, New York, two women were wounded and two — both women — were among three slaves executed for anti-slav- captured.27 ery activities in 1794.23 The respect and admiration accorded the black woman fighter by her people is strikingly illus- A.PTHEKEH'S Documentary History of the trated by an incident which transpired in Negro People in the United States con- York, Pennsylvania: when, during the early tains a portion of the transcript of an 1812 months of 1803, Margaret Bradley was con- confession of a slave rebel in Virginia. victed of attempting to poison two white The latter divulged the information that people, the black inhabitants of the area a black woman brought him into a plan to revolted en masse. kill their master and that yet another black woman had been charged with concealing They made several attempts to destroy the him after the killing occurred.28 town by fire and succeeded, within a period of three weeks, in burning eleven buildings. 21. llnd., p. 201. Patrols were established, strong guards set up, 22. Ibid., p. 207. the militia dispatched to the scene of the un- 23. Ibid., p. 215. 24. Ibid., p. 239. rest . . . and a reward of three hundred dollars 25. Ibid., pp. 241-242. offered for the capture of the insurrection- 26. Ibid., p. 247. PAGE 9 ists.24 27. Ibid., p. 251. 28. Aptheker. Documentary History, pp. 55-57. In 1816 it was discovered that a com- This factual survey of but a few of the munity of three hundred escaped slaves — open acts of resistance in which black men, women, children — had occupied a women played major roles will close with fort in . After the U.S. Army was two further events. When a maroon camp dispatched with instructions to destroy the in Mississippi was destroyed in 1857, four community, a ten day siege terminated of its members did not manage to elude with all but forty of the three hundred capture, one of whom was a fugitive slave dead. All the slaves fought to the very woman.36 All of them, women as well as end,29 In the course of a similar, though men, must have waged a valiant fight. smaller confrontation between maroons Finally, there occurred in October, 1862 a and a militia group (in South Carolina, skirmish between maroons and a scouting 1826), a woman and a child were killed.10 party of Confederate soldiers in the state Still another maroon community was at- of Virginia.37 This time, however, the ma- tacked in Mobile, Alabama in 1837. Its roons were the victors and it may well inhabitants, men and women alike, resisted have been that some of the many women fiercely — according to local newspapers, helped to put the soldiers to death. "fighting like Spartans."31 Convicted of having been among those who, in 1829, had been the cause of a J.HE OPPRESSION of slave women had to devastating fire in Augusta, Georgia, a assume dimensions of open counter-insur- black woman was "executed, dissected, gency. Against the background of the facts and exposed" (according to an English presented above, it would be difficult in- visitor). Moreover, the execution of yet deed to refute this contention. As for those another woman, about to give birth, was who engaged in open battle, they were no imminent.32 During the same year, a group less ruthlessly punished than slave men. of slaves, being led from to be It would even appear that in many cases sold in the South, had apparently planned they may have suffered penalties which to kill the traders and make their way to were more excessive than those meted out freedom. One of the traders was success- to the men. On occasion, when men were fully done away with, but eventually a hanged, the women were burned alive. If posse captured all the slaves. Of the six such practices were widespread, their logic leaders sentenced to death, one was a would be clear. They would be terrorist woman. She was first permitted, for reasons methods designed to dissuade other black of economy, to give birth to her child.33 women from following the examples of Afterwards, she was publicly hanged. their fighting sisters. If all black women rose up alongside their men, the institution J.HE SLAVE CLASS in Louisiana, as noted of slavery would be in difficult straits. earlier, was not unaware of the formidable It is against the backdrop of her role as threat posed by the black woman who fighter that the routine oppression of the chose to fight. It responded accordingly: slave woman must be explored once more. in 1846 a posse of slave owners ambushed If she was burned, hanged, broken on the a community of maroons, killing one wheel, her head paraded on poles before woman and wounding two others. A black her oppressed brothers and sisters, she must man was also assassinated.34 Neither could have also felt the edge of this counter- the border states escape the recognition insurgency as a fact of her daily existence. that slave women were eager to battle for their freedom. In 1850 in the state of Mis- souri, "about thirty slaves, men and women, 29. Aptheker, Stave Revolts, p. 259. of four different owners, had armed them- 30. Ibid., p. 277. 31. Ibid., p. 259. selves with knives, clubs and three guns 32. Ibid., p. 281. and set out for a free state." Their pur- 33. Ibid., p. 487. 34. Aptheker, "Guerrilla Warfare," p. 27. suers, who could unleash a far more pow- 35. Aptheker, Slave Revolts, p. 342. erful violence than they, eventually 36. Aptheker, "Guerrilla Warfare," p. 28. thwarted their plans.35 37. Ibid., p. 29. PAGE 10 The slave system would not only have to ever, having been wrested from passive, make conscious efforts to stifle the ten- "feminine" existence by the sheer force of dencies towards acts of the kind described things — literally by forced labor — con- above; it would be no less necessary to fining domestic tasks were incommensur- stave off escape attempts (escapes to ma- able with what she had become. That is to roon country!) and all the various forms of say, by virtue of her participation in pro- sabotage within the system. Feigning ill- duction, she would not act the part of the ness was also resistance as were work slow- passive female, but could experience the downs and actions destructive to the crops. same need as her men to challenge the con- The more extensive these acts, the more the ditions of her subjugation. As the center of slaveholder's profits would tend to dimin- domestic life, the only life at all removed ish. from the arena of exploitation, and thus While a detailed study of the myriad as an important source of survival, the modes in which this counter-insurgency black woman could play a pivotal role in was manifested can and should be con- nurturing the thrust towards freedom. ducted, the following reflections will focus on a single aspect of the slave woman's oppression, particularly prominent in its J.HE SLAVE MASTER would attempt to brutality. thwart this process. He knew that as fe- male, this slave woman could be particu- larly vulnerable in her sexual existence. LUCH HAS BEEN said about the sexual Although he would not pet her and deck abuses to which the black woman was her out in frills, the white master could forced to submit. They are generally ex- endeavor to reestablish her femaleness by plained as an outgrowth of the male reducing her to the level of her biological supremacy of Southern culture: the purity being. Aspiring with his sexual assaults to of white womanhood could not be violated establish her as a female animal, he would by the aggressive sexual activity desired be striving to destroy her proclivities to- by the white male. His instinctual urges wards resistance. Of the sexual relations would find expression in his relationships of animals, taken at their abstract biological with his property — the black slave woman, level (and not in terms of their quite dif- who would have to become his unwilling ferent social potential for human beings), concubine. No doubt there is an element says the following: of truth in these statements, but it is equally important to unearth the meaning It is unquestionably the male who takes the of these sexual abuses from the vantage female — she is taken. Often the word applies point of the woman who was assaulted. literally, for whether by means of special organs or through superior strength, the male In keeping with the theme of these re- seizes her and holds her in place; he performs flections, it will be submitted that the slave the copulatory movements; and, among in- master's sexual domination of the black se: ts, birds, and mammals, he penetrates . . . woman contained an unveiled element of Her body becomes a resistance to be broken counter-insurgency. To understand the through . . .38 basis for this assertion, the dialectical The act of copulation, reduced by the moments of the slave woman's oppression white man to an animal-like act, would be must be restated and their movement re- symbolic of the effort to conquer the re- captured. The prime factor, it has been sistance the black woman could unloose. said, was the total and violent expropria- In confronting the black woman as ad- tion of her labor with no compensation versary in a sexual contest, the master save the pittance necessary for bare exis- would be subjecting her to the most ele- tence. mental form of terrorism distinctively Secondly, as female, she was the house- suited for the female: rape. Given the al- keeper of the living quarters. In this sense, ready terroristic texture of plantation life, she was already doubly oppressed. How- PAGE II it would be as potential victim of rape that the slave woman would be most unguarded. Further, she might be most conveniently manipulable if the master contrived a ran- som system of sorts, forcing her to pay with her body for food, diminished severity in treatment, the safety of her children, etc. The integration of rape into the sparsely furnished legitimate social life of the slaves harks back to the feudal "right of the first night," the jus primae noctis. The feudal lord manifested and reinforced his domi- nation over the serfs by asserting his authority to have sexual intercourse with all the females. The right itself referred specifically to all freshly married women. But while the right to the first night even- tually evolved into the institutionalized "virgin tax,"39 the American slaveholder's sexual domination never lost its openly terroristic character.

A DIRECT ATTACK on the black female sion of its hot blood, and even its dear, old, as potential insurgent, this sexual repres- laughable strutting and posing; but one thing sion finds its parallels in virtually every I shall never forgive, neither in this world nor the world to come: its wanton and con- historical situation where the woman ac- tinued and persistent insulting of the black tively challenges oppression. Thus, Franz womanhood which it sought and seeks to pros- Fanon could say of the Algerian woman: titute to its lust.4l "A woman led away by soldiers who comes The retaliatory import of the rape for back a week later — it is not necessary to the black man would be entrapment in an question her to understand that she has untenable situation. Clearly the master been violated dozens of times."40 hoped that once the black man was struck In its political contours, the rape of the by his manifest inability to rescue his black woman was not exclusively an attack women from sexual assaults of the master, upon her. Indirectly, its target was also he would begin to experience deep-seated the slave community as a whole. In launch- doubts about his ability to resist at all. ing the sexual war on the woman, the master would not only assert his sovereign- V-4ERTAINLY THE wholesale rape of slave ty over a critically important figure of the women must have had a profound impact slave community, he would also be aiming on the slave community. Yet it could not a blow against the black man. The latter's succeed in its intrinsic aim of stifling the instinct to protect his female relations and impetus towards struggle. Countless black comrades (now stripped of its male su- women did not passively submit to these premacist implications) would be frus- abuses, as the slaves in general refused to trated and violated to the extreme. Placing passively accept their bondage. The strug- the white male's sexual barbarity in bold gles of the slave woman in the sexual realm relief, Du Bois cries out in a rhetorical were a continuation of the resistance inter- vein: I shall forgive the Soutn much in its final judgement day: I shall forgive its slavery, for 38. Simone de Beauvoir, , New York: Bantam Books, 1961, pp. 18-19. slavery is a world-old habit; I shall forgive its 39. August Bebel, Women and , New fighting for a well-lost cause, and for remem- York: Socialist Literature Co., 1910, p. 66-69. bering that struggle with tender tears; I shall 40. Franz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, New York: forgive its so-called 'pride of race,' the pas- Grove Press, 1967, p. 119. 41. Du Bois, Darkwater, p. 172. PAGE 12 laced in the slave's daily existence. As such, this was yet another form of insur- /V.N INTRICATE and savage web of oppres- gency, a response to a politically tinged sion intruded at every moment into the sexual repression. black woman's life during slavery. Yet a single theme appears at every juncture: Even E. Franklin Frazier (who goes out the woman transcending, refusing, fighting of his way to defend the thesis that "the back, asserting herself over and against master in his mansion and his colored terrifying obstacles. It was not her com- mistress in her special house nearby repre- rade brother against whom her incredible sented the final triumph of social ritual in strength was directed. She fought along- the presence of the deepest feelings of hu- side her man, accepting or providing guid- man solidarity"42) could not entirely ignore ance according to her talents and the the black woman who fought back. He nature of their tasks. She was in no sense notes: That physical compulsion was an authoritarian figure; neither her domes- necessary at times to secure submission on tic role nor her acts of resistance could the part of black women ... is supported relegate the man to the shadows. On the by historical evidence and has been pre- contrary, she herself had just been forced served in the tradition of Negro families,"43 to leave behind the shadowy realm of fe- The sexual contest was one of many male passitivity in oider to assume her arenas in which the black woman had to rightful place beside the insurgent male. prove herself as a warrior against oppres- sion. What Frazier unwillingly concedes would mean that countless children brutal- JLHIS PORTRAIT cannot, of course, presume ly fathered by whites were conceived in the to represent every individual slave woman. thick of battle. Frazier himself cites the It is rather a portrait of the potentials and story of a black woman whose great grand- possibilities inherent in the situation to mother, a former slave, would describe which slave women were anchored. In- with great zest the battles behind all her variably there were those who did not numerous scars — that is, all save one. In realize this potential. There were those response to questions concerning the unex- who were indifferent and a few who were plained scar, she had always simply said: outright traitors. But certainly they were "White men are as low as dogs, child, stay not the vast majority. The image of black away from them." The mystery was not women enchaining their men, cultivating unveiled until after the death of this brave relationships with the" oppressor is a cruel woman: "She received that scar at the fabrication which must be called by its hands of her master's youngest son, a boy right name. It is a dastardly ideological of about eighteen years at the time she weapon designed to impair our capacity for resistance today by foisting upon us conceived their child, my grandmother the ideal of male supremacy. Ellen."44 According to a time-honored principle, advanced by Marx, Lenin, Fanon and numerous other theorists, the status of women in any given society is a barometer SHE RODE OFF ON A COW I won't let 'em whip you." measuring the overall level of social de- She didn't work in the field. She She said. "I'm going to kill you. worked at a loom. She worked so These black titties sucked you. and velopment. As Fanon has masterfully long and so often that once she then you come out here to beat me." shown, the strength and efficacy of social went to sleep at the loom. Her mas- And when she left him. he wasn't ter's boy saw her and told his able to walk. mother. His mother told him to take And that was the last 1 seen of her a whip and wear her out. He took a until after freedom. She went out stick and went out to beat her and got on an old cow that she used 42. E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in the awake. He beat my mother till she to milk—Dolly, she called it. She United States, : U. of Chicago Press, woke up. When she woke up, she rode away from the plantation, 1966 (Isted., 1939), p. 69. took a pole out of the loom and beat because she knew they would kill 43. Ibid., p. 53. him nearly to death with it. He hol- her if she stayed. lered. "Don't beat me no more, and 44. Ibid., pp. 53-54.

PAGE 13 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 J.HE 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 indiscriminant brutal pursuit of profit, the In the great rank and file of our five mil- 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 lancl.45 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 color. She could turn the weapon of between the black man and woman should equality in struggle against the avaricious 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. J.HE MYTH MUST be consciously repudi- ated as myth and the black woman in her true historical contours must be resur- T.HI»S 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 45. Du Bois, Darkwater, p. 185. never be exhaustively defined by her uni- quely "female" responsibilities. As a result, black women have made significant contributions to struggles published by against the racism and the dehumanizing NEW ENGLAND FREE PRESS exploitation of a wrongly organized society. 60 Union Square Somerville, Mass. 021^3 In fact, it would appear that the intense (617) 628-2^50 write for free literature list UJ QQ THEBIACKSCHOLAR £ O journal of black studies V) QQ :D CO TTHEBtACKSCHOLARl IpfBUVCKSQ < )t A! THEBUVCKSCHOLAP

Hailed by as, "a journal in which • New directions in black culture: works by Don the writings of many of todays finest black thinkers may L Lee, John 0 Killens, Soma Sanchez, and others; be viewed," THE BLACK SCHOLAR has firmly established • Articles on the African Liberation Movement by itself as the leading journal of black cultural and political Sekou Toure. Julius Nyerere, thought in this country. In its pages, black intellectuals, and other internationally known figures; street activists and political leaders of all viewpoints come • Stimulating reviews of significant black books, to grips with the basic issues of black America and Africa. records and films: In the past our subscribers have enjoyed the following • Interviews with major black leaders and news- lively and exciting articles and authors: makers; • Angela Davis on the role of bl^ck women under Contemporary, timely and historical. THE BLACK SCHOLAR American slavery and capitalism; has emerged as the cutting edge of black thought today • Congresswoman s analysis of Your subscription to THE BLACK SCHOLAR will not only coalition politics. keep you informed on black culture and politics, it will • A call for a massive homestead act to provide keep you ahead of contemporary events Published by each black American with a parcel of land; the Black World Foundation THE BLACK SCHOLAR oub • First hand critiques by black prisoners on social lishes 10 issues per year, $12.00; 3 years, $25.00 and penal conditions; • On the spot coverage of revolutionary , by GET THIS BOOK FREE! BLACK SCHOLAR Editor Robert Chnsman and Asso- ciate Editor Robert L. Allen: As a special subscription premium, we are offering you. • Why the Black Panthers shifted from rebellion free, a copy of CONTEMPORARY BLACK THOUGHT: THE to political action, as outlined by ; BEST FROM THE BLACK • Why blacks should own the states of Mississippi. SCHOLAR. |ust published Louisiana, Georgia. Alabama and South Carolina. by Bobbs Merrill. Con- • Black Gl's explaining the increase of black nation- taining some of the most CONTEMPCRARv alism and armed rebellion in the armed forces. exciting black essays to • The strategy and tactics of black guerilla warfare: appear in recent years, BLACK • The true nature of sexual roles in the black this $3 95 value is yours THOUGHT community as analyzed by BLACK SCHOLAR Publisher with your subscription to , Robert Staples. Joyce Ladner and other THE BLACK SCHOLAR. leading black sociologists; Your subscription also • Eldndge Cleaver s essays on revolution; enrolls you in THE BLACK • New trends in the Pan African movement, by WORLD FOUNDATION and . Le Roi Jones and Max Stanford, entitles you to further its leading advocates. privileges.

This article is reprinted from The Black Scholar, December, 1971