Today's lesson:
Confederate Monuments
“In fact, most American slaves were not kidnapped on another continent. Though over 12.7 million Africans were forced onto ships to the Western hemisphere, estimates only have 400,000-500,000 landing in present-day America. How then to account for the four million black slaves who were tilling fields in 1860? “The South,” the Sublettes write, “did not only produce tobacco, rice, sugar, and cotton as commodities for sale; it produced people.” Slavers called slave-breeding “natural increase,” but there was nothing natural about producing slaves; it took scientific management. Thomas Jefferson bragged to George Washington that the birth of black children was increasing Virginia’s capital stock by four percent annually.”
Ned & Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry
To be blunt, America had slave breeding “factories” where slaves were forced to breed. I call them factories but in most cases they are described as farms. These “farms” generally had at least a 2:1 female to male ratio. In some states, slave production was the number 1 industry. Virginia led the nation in slave production and PRESIDENT Thomas Jefferson was one of the main producers. The slave breeding industry has been hidden and left out of the annals of American history. This was done on purpose.
After reading how this was done it becomes very easy to see why. There are just some wrongs that cannot be excused by the belief that holding past generations to modern standards is wrong. Basically, the slave breeding industry manufactured human beings to be sold into labor. It is very difficult to read the atrocities associated with such a practice and not get angry. To hear whites today just dismiss the entire enterprise of slavery like it was just some short term inconsequential inconvenience this country experienced for a little while that we as blacks should just forget is for the lack of a better word, crap.
This industry included the first employer-based health care program. Female slaves were the first people in America to get free health care. I do not say this to be funny because the reason why that happened was both sad and simple; after the importation of slaves was made illegal, white dependence on slave labor hinged on the continued births of healthy children. After importation was made illegal, the only way left to maintain the system was by increasing the number of slaves through births. Due to this, a black women’s ability to reproduce was of the utmost economic importance to southern planters and to the slave breeders.
I think we need to understand how depraved things were during these times. The range of sexual abuses black slaves included buck breaking, whereby slave masters would rape enslaved black men. Buck Breaking was used as a method to control slave uprisings. If a male slave was considered a trouble maker, the slave master would give that slave a severe beating. Once the slave was beaten basically unconscious, the slave master made the other slaves lay him over a tree stump where his pants would be taken off and the slave owner would perform sodomy on that slave. Enslaved men were forced to have sex with each other in front of their families and they were also raped in front of their sons. Many of these men would kill themselves or run away after this happened to them. However buck breaking was not only used to stop potential slave rebellions.
Black men were also raped for pleasure. Gay people are not a product of modern “liberals.” Gays and lesbians have always been part of the world community. Gay slave owners existed. Gay slave owners bought male slaves. Gay slave owners raped their slaves. Buck breaking got so good to some that “Sex Farms” were created to breed black men for gay white men to have sex with. Gay white men would travel from plantation to plantation in order to rape slaves. I really do not know any other way to describe this because the black men involved really had no choice in what was happening to them.
Buck breaking was part of the slave breeding industry. As I wrote earlier, breeding factories were in business to increase the population of black people by forcing them to have sex in order to maintain cheap slave labor. In many cases black men had to sleep with their daughters, mothers or sisters. If they refused, they were killed. The derogatory term ************ originates from this practice. Conversely, black women were forced to sleep with their sons and brothers. Black women were routinely raped by slave owners who felt they were doing these women a favor.
THAT, is what some of you are fighting to remember.
Ned & Constance Sublette,
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, Chicago, Lawrence Hill Books, 2016, pg.1
Ned & Constance Sublette,
The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry, Chicago, Lawrence Hill Books, 2016, pg. 84
William Spivey,
The Truth About American Slave Breeding Farms, June 9, 2019,
The Truth About American Slave Breeding Farms
Rashid Booker,
Slave Breeding Farms of "Africans in North America",
https://www.academia.edu/9864206/Slave_Breeding_Farms_of_Africans_in_North_America_
Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936 to 1938, Library of Congress,
Articles and Essays | Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress
Solomon Northrup,
Twelve Years a Slave, Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853, from a Cotton Plantation near the Red River in Louisiana, Project Gutenberg E-book, May 11, 2014 [EBook #45631], pg.189
Elizabeth Keckley,
Behind the Scenes: Or, Thirty Years a Slave, and Four Years in the White House, 1868, New York: G. W. Carleton & Co., Publishers, 1868., pp. 38-39,
Keckley, Elizabeth, ca. 1818-1907. "Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty years a Slave and Four Years in the White House",
America’s slaves breeding farms: what history books never told you, February 26, 2020,
America’s slaves breeding farms: what history books never told you
Elizabeth Ofosuah Johnson,
5 horrifying ways enslaved African men were sexually exploited and abused by their white masters, October 11, 2018,
https://face2faceafrica.com/article/5-horrifying-ways-enslaved-african-men-were-sexually-exploited-and-abused-by-their-white-masters/3#:~:text=Buck Breaking became very popular when slave rebellions,to serve as a warning to other slaves.
Isaac Somto,
Buck Breaking, How African Male Slaves Were Raped, July 27, 2020,
Buck Breaking, How African Male Slaves Were Raped | Vocal Africa
Jason Kottke,
A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry in the United States, Feb 02, 2016,
A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry in the United States
