The Untold Horrors Of Black Male Slaves By White Women

White women were not passive bystanders to the slave economy. They were co-conspirators. They bought, sold, and owned slaves. In fact, about 40% of the slave owners were white women. The more slaves a woman had, the more power she held. Parents gave their daughters more enslaved people than land.

So to a white southern woman, owning slaves became tied to her very identity. This is the true story of how white women treated their black slaves. Slavery in the US lasted for more than 400 years. And in that time, the system shaped generations and generations of people. A system that created this psychological distortion.

White people dominated the country. They created a violent and oppressive system to terrorize the black community. They used lynchings, beatings, and savage treatment to torment the masses. Even when there wasn’t violence, there was segregation. Communities, housing, and the criminal justice system used discriminatory policies.

Racism pervaded all aspects of American society. White families gained huge amounts of material benefits and privileges from this racial hierarchy. Before the Civil War in the South, American white women couldn’t vote. When they got married, the husband became the head of the household, and the woman was the heart of the home.

Women were considered the property of their husbands. Their mobility and freedom were severely limited. For example, if a woman wanted to travel, she would need a male chaperon. The abuse was considered a normal way to control a woman. They were expected to remain cheerful, pleasant, obedient, and faithful while their husbands had affairs and female slaves.

These women knew that the mixed race slave children on their properties were their husband’s offspring. That’s why many white women wanted freedom of their own, power to turn the narrative. That’s where slavery came into play. Most people know that George Washington had slaves. They took care of his Mount Vernon home, but very few people know that Martha, his wife, was the one who drastically increased the slave population there.

When the couple got married in 1759, George owned about 18 slaves, but Martha owned 84. The high number of people Martha owned might be unusual, but the fact that she had black slaves is not. She and many other white women were violent and active participants in the slave trade. Having many enslaved people increased a woman’s chances of finding a good husband.

After marriage, white women went to court to keep legal ownership over their slaves. And in many cases, they won. That’s because for women, slavery was their freedom. In the past, historians believe that white women didn’t have a significant role in slavery. They based their conclusions on the writings of a small group of white women from the south.

However, Jones Rogers, an associate professor of history at the University of California, Berkeley, used a different source: interviews with black people. Real evidence that gave her a better look at what happened during the time of slavery. “Enslaved all our lives and mother was a slave, sisters are slave, father was enslaved. They know nothing about reading right. All that I know that teaches my master.”

These interviews were part of the Federal Writers Project, a branch of the Works Progress Administration. The truth is, white girls were taught how to become slave owners at a very young age. When they were just 9 months old, they grew up in a world that showed them how to control, own, and master enslaved people.

“A lot of people didn’t have no beds when they slaves. People slept on the floor, how to empire them. Just like a lot of uh wild people, we didn’t we didn’t know nothing. Didn’t like looking no book.”

Many of their family members, even their female cousins, friends, mothers, and grandmothers were teaching these young women how the world works. They have this property and once they get married, this property will belong to their husband unless they are willing to do something about it. And if that husband is a loser, so are you. So young girls were trained to make sure that whatever happened in their lives, they would need to ensure their success. When a white woman was old enough to have slaves, she could use her social standing to uphold and sustain that power.

She could dictate the lives of those she owned and could verbally or brutally exploit her servants. What many people today may not realize is that southern households did their best to reproduce slave society. They wanted more servants at a lower cost. White women born during these periods, whether boys or girls, would watch their parents exert dominion over their black servants.

They were taught to mimic their behaviors. They were ready, smart, calculated. They knew exactly what they were doing. The book “They Were Her Property” gives us clear examples of how life back then actually looked like. The first chapter starts with Lizzie Anna Burwell, a three-year-old who demands her father cut the ears of a black servant and get her a new maid from Clarksville.

Her father would then give the girl more slaves as gifts so that they would become her property. The book reveals how women in the antebellum south could actively possess property and in turn lay claim to owning black servants. Legally married women were not recognized as property owners due to the coverture doctrine.

This meant that a married couple was seen as having one legal identity belonging to the husband. In Stephanie Mccur’s works, “Women’s War and Confederate Reckoning,” the coverture mirrored the private authority slaveholders held over black servants. Women had limited legal and political standing, and any attempts they made in this regard were met with significant resistance.

Jones Rogers acknowledged that coverture often restricted married white women. But she also explained that southern families frequently bypassed or overlooked these restrictions. Families could transfer property to daughters or other female relatives under the condition that it would remain separate from marital assets. Southern woman could and did create what we now refer to as prenuptial agreements or documents like deeds of trust, deeds of gift, and wills, which granted the wife control over all the property she already possessed or would acquire during her marriage. In Louisiana, women could ask the court to establish separate marital estates if their husbands exhibited imprudent financial management. For example, if their husband failed to budget their expenses, accumulated debt, spent too much, etc. In other words, there were two distinct systems that coexisted.

A genuine patriarchy alongside an actual framework of legal and financial influence held by white women. There was a common misconception that white women were sheltered and delicate. They kept the household clean of all the impurities of the outside world. But that is absolutely not true. Slave traders, travelers, merchants, city officials, and former black slaves all attested to the presence of white women in 19th century slave markets.

When slavery was at its peak, women also sold and bought black servants from the comfort of their own homes. Many times within local social networks because of their widespread influence, white women created a completely different market of enslaved wet nurses. Now, you might be wondering why these white women felt the need to tear black women from their families to nurse their children.

One actual report said that white women who were constantly having babies felt like a slave in their own homes. Black women could ease that burden. So, it was easier to buy a wet nurse who would take care of such responsibilities. Depending on her financial status, the white woman could hire, borrow, or purchase an enslaved wet nurse.

This gave white women the power to pursue social events while someone else took care of their newborn. Some, but not all, white women were incredibly brutal to their enslaved. They were so violent that their husbands had to restrain them. For example, a wealthy white woman often invested in enslaved men and women so that they would be forced to reproduce and give her more slaves.

Historical records kept track of a woman called Henrietta Butler, who was forced to have sex with enslaved black men to have a child. She was then forced to nurse her mistress’s child, but many other women suffered a similar fate. Masters often raped their enslaved servants to make sure they had an ample supply of wet nurses.

White women from affluent households also ran brothels, especially the women who had many male and female slaves. By 1860, nearly half of all African slaves in the Americas were in the United States. That was about 4 to 6 million people. Based on reports from the 1860 census, 393,973 white individuals owned 3,950,528 black individuals. Only about 1.5% of the white population in the US owned slaves. It’s been over 150 years since slavery legally ended in 1865. But the true trauma wasn’t just the experience of slavery, but also the aftermath when hopes for equality and acceptance were crushed in the 1880s to 1890s due to a shift in beliefs about blacks and whites.

 

When the Civil War came and it was time to free the enslaved, many white women retaliated. Female slave owners resisted the change by letting the Union authorities know they were loyal. There were many cases where female slave owners sought compensation when the American government abolished slavery in the District of Columbia. Others wanted to keep their property by any means necessary.

They went as far as to move their enslaved people away from the areas affected by the war in a practice known as refugeeing. When the Civil War ended, many white women negotiated labor conditions with freed black people. They tried to maintain control over the young African-Americans by taking their children as apprentices. Apprenticeship was another form of labor.

Although it was better than complete slavery, it was still not freedom. Ex-slaves were expected to work under the same master or mistress, often for meager wages and a specific time set. Many apprentices worked for the same person that used to be their mistress. And it was not that better than the life they had before. W. E. B. Du Bois, an American sociologist, wrote something about it.

“He said a slave went free, stood for a brief moment in the sun, then moved back again towards slavery.”

This brief moment in the sun was when black communities along with support from the freedman‘s bureau started establishing schools, social assistance, and some legal protections. However, this progress was largely undermined by the white southern elite that includes white women.

 

They swiftly passed laws known as the Black Codes. Their goal was simple. Reintroduce obligations, burdens, and restrictions that would mimic slavery. The Black Codes were designed to take away the voting rights of black people. They were meant to stop them from becoming juries or state militias. Instead, the white people would create this complex system where freed black people could still be controlled.

 

White men and women put in place contract and vagrancy laws. They led to a popular peonage labor system. Peonage is a type of involuntary servitude based on claimed debt. By 1915, at least six former slaveholding states had laws that made it possible to force black people to work against their will. For example, if a black person was found guilty of vagrancy, they were forced to work in the convict lease system.

This system brought in substantial profits for the wealthy white women and men who both sold and bought the labor of those who were convicted. Experts found a memoir of a white woman called Rebecca Felton. Take a look at this colorized interview from 1929. Felton was a former slave owner who grew up during the Civil War.

“I went to Washington 50 years and a little more ago. I saw all the people around there and been with the president. I was one of the board of lady managers for the Chicago Exposition and I served my full time in Chicago.”

In her memoir, she talked about the corruption in Georgia’s legal system. She mentioned that there were cases where judges were elected by a dominant faction. During this time, a black person could be sentenced to hard labor for 10 years for stealing just three eggs or a bowl of milk. She also noted that a 15-year-old black girl in Atlanta got a 5-year penitentiary for taking 50 cents from another black child. The dominant faction made a huge amount of money, about half a million a year, from the convict leasing system.

And judges who sent strong black people to prison had much better chances of being elected. But control wouldn’t have been possible without the threat of violence. That’s where groups like the Ku Klux Klan came into play. They intimidated, brutalized, and murdered black people across the nation. The Women’s KKK was a separate but affiliated racist group of white Protestant women.

They got more members through empowerment feminism. The first version of the KKK emerged in Pulaski, Tennessee after the Civil War. It was established by men who were upset about the newly liberated black population. They were angry about their political rights and sought purpose, thrill, and a socially accepted platform where they could be violent.

These early KKK members wanted something new, but they wanted to keep it under a veil of secrecy, and they did just that. The KKK created a strict organization with many ceremonies that would go perfectly with their hateful anti-reconstruction goals. During the starting days of the clan, women didn’t actively participate, but they did sew their husbands and family members clothes for the ceremonies.

Women also had a symbolic role to play. One of the goals of these extremists, as they saw it, was to shield pure and innocent women from the frightening black people who were now a threat, especially in its early years. The male clan held two conflicting views of femininity and womanhood. One was a fantasy and the other was a concession to real people.

In their minds, white Protestant women were pure, virtuous beings whose main purpose was to support and serve men. In return, men would safeguard these vulnerable ladies from those sexually aggressive black men. In the second phase of the clan came the women’s KKK. This was a related but separate group specifically for white Protestant women.

The early days of the WKK were marked by conflicts within the clan itself. One leader of the male clan started a group called the Chameleas. It focused on women and advocated for white supremacy so that he could increase his own influence. Another leader joined forces with a secretive women’s society called the Queens of the Golden Mask.

Eventually, the Golden Mask group prevailed and became the WKK. It was the first authorized in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1923. At its height, the WKK had branches in every state, especially in Arkansas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. Much like the male KKK, the WKK had a structured system. Interestingly, the system had similar aspects to the Roman Catholic hierarchy.

There were positions like the imperial commander, clay lifts, cloards, clickraps, claybes along with the Klexster Clorogos. People in these positions were responsible for enforcing clan rules. They recruited members, collected dues, organized events, and so on. But all of these roles and activities were influenced by racism, nationalism, fear of outsiders, and a determination to protect the family.

In contrast to their male counterparts, the WKK didn’t often participate in lynching or other violent acts. Aside from a 1924 incident where members paraded with clubs because of this absence of physical violence, many historians tend to see WKK members, as well as women in racist movements in general, as obscure and relatively unimportant figures.

They just see them as people who worked in the background of their men. But the fact is the women KKK was very powerful. They were excellent manipulators. They used their social standing to further improve their agendas. Many of these members had organized social clubs before. So it was super easy for them to spread the word and destroy the reputations of political candidates or anyone else they deemed unworthy.

These women tried to remove Catholic public school teachers, organized boycotts of businesses, and supported candidates who were aligned with the clan. They increased their influence by providing food baskets to needy families. They also arranged events like weddings, funerals, speeches, parades, christenings, carnivals, and lectures.

By organizing both ceremonial and social activities, these women integrated the clan and its beliefs into the everyday life of American society. In their minds, all the good people were a part of the clan. These groups were unsettling precisely because they seamlessly blended with small towns in America. WKK didn’t attract women because it was something new or unusual.

No, it was popular because it aligned naturally with the lives of white Protestant Americans and their values and traditions. Many of these women viewed the clan as a social club, an opportunity to have a good time with friends. But their shared commitment to racism and xenophobia was terrifying. Many of these white women were conservatives to the core.

They were dedicated to the cause and had power within their communities. Some of these women were also active outside their homes. Lulu Markwell, for example, was the first national leader of the WKK. She worked for women suffrage in Indiana and other states. Daisy Douglas Barr led the clan, but was also an esteemed Quaker preacher.

This means that they had a huge impact on a much broader scale. As you can see, white women were not bystanders when it came to slavery in the slave trade. They were very much involved in the system as their male counterparts. The only thing is that many of these women were believed to be innocent and pure while in fact they had their own agendas and were proud to own slaves.

They benefited from the slave market and wanted to expand their own riches. After all, they too were born in a system that exploited black people. This system shaped their morals, ethics, and values, creating widescale oppression and brutality.