• Thank you to Carol and Steve Bowman, the forum owners, for our new upgrade!

Slavery During or Before the Civil War

I've got some more info for you, Deborah.

Talked to my Professor again and he said that there was no specific name for when the master had sex with the slaves. However, he did say that the women (slave) were referred to as slave mistresses. In Louisiana, South Carolina and Georgia, they were sometimes called a concubine or a plaçage due to the French influence in those areas. He said that these women were normally in the house and had to have sex with the master whenever he wanted. He said this was also related to the quadroon ball. A quadroon is someone that is 3/4 white and 1/4 black. In this event, the parents, particularly the mothers would dress up the daughters, especially if they were quadroons since they had the most exotic looks, and basically auction them off to a rich person. He basically said this was like a whore house without the sex. The sex came after they bought the girl. That's all I can remember for now.
 
HI Mertzie,

Oh yes...it was easy to forgive him once I experienced it in meditation and understood that his actions were normal for the time. I know, sounds odd, but it was his right - I belonged to him and it was my duty. No blame......just was. Besides, forgiving is the best way - to heal. If I hold on to the hurt - I will only be drawn to it again in the next life time.

Greenknight - I think you and Chelle may be right. I went to the name Emily because it is my nieces name. Emma is a common 19th century name for sure. I bet you two are correct! :)

CunoDante - my daughter would have only been ten years old at the end of the Civil War...and I remember leaving with her, my husband Timmy and our son for Oklahoma. We had a dog named Hoggie, a small cart, a donkey and we walked the whole way there. I do not know of....and I did not experience anything that relates to quadroon's, but that is interesting. Thank you for sharing it with me.
 
Forgiveness is so often the aim!

Deborah - I'm so glad it was easy to forgive your grandfather once you better understood the times. There's a lot to be said for bringing these past life scenarios into consciousness! :)
 
One more thought.....

I want to clarify what I said ".....it was his right - I belonged to him.........."

It by NO MEANS made it right.
 
Hi Deborah,

With regard to the owners having sex with their slaves, here are some of the reasons they did so:

Some owners had sex with their slaves simply because they found them attractive or because their wife was indisposed due to pregnancy, recent childbirth or illness. It was common for men with wives past child bearing age to 'respect' their wife by not expecting her to continue giving them their conjugal rights, so they availed themselves of their slaves instead.

Because many owners regarded the 'darkies' as an inferior species of human, they were curious as to what a half 'darkie' would be like, maybe more intelligent, able to work harder, live longer, etc. When Europeans passed laws against slavery, it became harder to get new slaves imported and they sold for much higher prices than in the past. This brought about a breeding program. Healthy women, known to be fertile, were paired with carefully chosen men and were forced to reproduce. If they refused, they risked being beaten without mercy. Their children were usually sold, sometimes as young as two years old, or traded for slaves belonging to another owner to prevent inbreeding on a particular plantation. As one such mammy heart-breakingly put it, "I dun never see dem chillun grow." Some owners figured that introducing some of their own blood would also avoid weakness due to inbreeding. Paler skinned, half white slaves could also be sold for higher prices as household servants. It was altogether a disgusting business!

With regard to Clara's Massa being French and having a name that sounded something like Beautionne, it happened a lot that complex names from other countries ended up being mispronounced and misspelt. Perhaps it was something like Baudon dit Lafontaine. If you were unable to read, you may have thought such a long and complex name was just one word.

Hope this helps you.

Angelcat :)
 
There was a little boy in the movie "Life with Father" whose name was Harlan. However that movie was set in NYC,

Growing up in St Augustine Florida in the 1960's and 70's I had a classmate whose first name was Harlen. The family was from Southern Georgia originally. I don't know if the name was traditional in his family but it could have been.
 
More research

Hi Angelcat,

Yes..my research has revealed the same. Thank you for the tip on the last name. No I could not read then - but I did know my name and a handful of words. I imagine I never saw his name in written form and it sure the heck had a wierd sound and sounded long. Perhaps someday I will figure it out.

Thanks for the input Greenknight. It's nice to know.

Right now I am approaching my research in a very different fashion than before. Instead of looking for facts and figures and "information," I am looking at the written story's (most dictated) of slaves who lived in the 1930's and lived during the Civil War. In these documents I am finding validation - after validation. I will post a few this afternoon. The language - and their memories are so similar to my own. And the examples will be from slaves who lived in Alabama. :)
 
Curious..........

I am wondering if anyone else is having more success - reading first hand accounts from people who lived during the times they remember - versus researching through History books?

It seems History changes as it is documented from one text to the next. The small details of everyday life - are generalized, & catagorized. But when reading the accounts of Black American's who lived during the time I remember...the picture is more complete, honest, and touches my heart - far more than the facts. :cool
 
For a general overview of history, or an analysis years--or centuries--later, textbooks are great. To really understand how people thought, what issues were important to them and what conditions they took for granted, firsthand accounts are the only way to go.
 
Hi, Deborah

Have you discovered the wealth of information at the Library of Congress site? This page came up when I typed slavery into the search box. The stuff that pops up is incredible, including first-person audio recordings from the '30s and '40s of former slaves describing their lives.

Here's a copy and paste of the first two items in the list of at least 500 links available:

Voices from the Days of Slavery, Audio Interviews (American Memory from the Library of ...
The Voices from the Days of Slavery Collection provides sound recordings of former slaves describing their lives. The former slaves discuss how they felt about slavery, slaveholders, how slaves were coerced, their ...
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/voices/


Slaves and the Courts, 1740-1860
The documents in this collection from the Library of Congress describe trials and legal proceedings concerning slaves in free jurisdictions, fugitive slaves, slave revolts, the African slave trade, and abolitionists in ...
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/sthtml/

This account is by a woman who said she was 121 years old. When you click on the link to the rest of the narrative by each of these people, a typewritten page pops up that can be enlarged.
 
Deborah, the history books never give you the complete picture. I personally prefer first hand accounts. As I said, for our history, the only way you'll truly find out anything valuable is to get it straight from the horse's mouth. I learn a lot more about my history from my great-grandmother and reading stories written by African-American novelists at the time than I have ever learned from reading a textbook or researching on a web site just because so much of our history is not recorded, whether done intentionally or unintentionally.

Good luck on your quest.
 
The importance of Oklahoma

Thank you all for the links and suggestions. I will look into the documentary film by the Library of Congress as well as the links on the web. I have an advertisement pinned up in my art studio from a few years ago about it. :) :) Thanks for reminding me Anaxagoras. :)

Back in the early 1990's I had vivid memories of moving with my husband Timmy and my daughter Caroline - to Oklahoma. To be "Free."

.....I am with my daughter, she is about eight or nine years old. "We are free Timmy,” I say to my husband as tears come to my eyes. I know we are leaving for Oklahoma. I look over my left shoulder at the big white house for the last time. I tell myself I will never forget the pain of this place, or the abuse.

We have a mule, a small cart, a box of clothes, a bag of flour and sugar, and ourselves. Timmy drives the cart and little Caroline rides in the back. I walk, but sometimes I drive the cart.

Time shifts........I know a few years have passed, because we have a home now. I can see our house, it has a small room in front where we eat, and live, and two small rooms in the back. We sleep on a small cot together and the children on a hay loft up in the rafters. I see a tree swing out front with a wooden seat where Caroline loves to play. I see my son Edward, I call him "Eddy." He is just a baby playing in a hand made wooden baby seat. I think I am pregnant again!
Click to expand...

This seemed to be a black community in Oklahoma and the land was free.

There was a group of us, four women doing laundry by hand, in a wash tub, with a press and then hanging the clothes on the line to dry. Everyday chores and everyday life. Not all of my memories are traumatic. The clothes line was shared by several families. There were no fences between the property lines. We were talking about an older woman in the community -her name was Gordie Mae. The work was hard -the pace of life was slow. It was just everyday life - a simpler time.

Then we are sharing stories about the Twister -I said ‘ I ain’t seen nothin like that twista -“ and then I remembered........The sky was green - there was an eerie calm before the storm............ I was letting some animals loose from the barn so they could escape the storm. I had a scarf wrapped around my head and the wind was blowing something fierce. The shutters were hitting the sides of the house. We were headed for a cellar......underground.

Time shifts -I am sitting on a porch in a rocker, knitting and talking with the other women. My shoulders ache from washing the laundry by hand and hanging heavy wet clothes. I am knitting a sweater.

Time and place shifts again but I am in Oklahoma. I am in Church, there is a community congregation but it feels more like a political assembly. An old woman is seated in the front row and stomps her cane on the ground. It is Gordie Mae. She is talking about our rights, as human beings, as Americans, living in the land of the free..........
Click to expand...

Now I am researching Oklahoma. I had several meditations in the early 1990's where Oklahoma came up again and again. It wasn't until this year I found out why! The land was offered to the Blacks... after the Civil War, for free. If anyone cares to look and you find something more. Please share! :)
 
curious_girl said:
CunoDante, just curious, but what are you studying?
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but the Professor to which I kept referring taught my "Alternative Voices in American Literature" class -- basically an english class. I'm a computer engineering major, however, most of my study time is devoted to the voice, singing and music.
 
Anyone else catch this?

I was watching the NBC news this evening and my local news station KSEE News had a segment on our government apologizing for not making Lynching illegal - sooner and is addressing it to African Americans!!!!!!!!

Could that be? That is has been legal - until now? Did I hear wrong? My jaw is on the floor--- sorry.

There was an old man; 75 years old in a wheel chair that survived a lynching in the 1940's at age 16.

I have been doing searches on line and cannot find the article or segment. I did not catch if it was the Congress - or Senate apologizing.
 
I'm not sure, but I think this year is the anniversary of anti-lynching laws. The schools around here are celebrating the anniversary of civil rights actions and I think one of them was anti-lynching laws, but I don't know for sure. :confused:

I believe that lynchers used the "right to a speedy trial" as justification for their actions, but I don't know if lynching was actually legal, or if it just wasn't addressed in our laws before making it illegal. :confused:
 
According to the report- it sounded like it was just now illegal. But maybe I am wrong. Still... perhaps it was earlier - after that black man on the news survived lynching in th 1940's. I wish someone else had seen the segment.
 
I found this among trivia questions.

The first anti-lynching law in the United States was passed in Georgia in 1893, but it only made the violation punishable by four years in prison.
Click to expand...

Here's this from USA Today.

Senate will apologize for blocking anti-lynching laws

The great-great-granddaughter of a black South Carolina farmer who was killed by a white mob nearly a century ago will be on hand next week when the Senate belatedly apologizes for failing to pass anti-lynching legislation.

Doria Dee Johnson, an author and lecturer on lynchings, says she will be in the chamber next Monday when the Senate will take up a resolution expressing remorse for not stopping a crime that took the lives of at least 4,742 people, mostly blacks, from 1882 to 1968.

The measure apologizes and expresses “most solemn regrets of the Senate to the descendants of victims of lynching.”

The Senate resolution, sponsored by Sens. Mary Landrieu, D-La., and George Allen, R-Va., notes that nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were introduced in the first half of the 20th century and that seven presidents petitioned Congress to end lynching. But Senate filibusters blocked anti-lynching legislation for decades, Johnson said. “It will be nice to have an apology from that same body,” she said.
Click to expand...

Notice it is a belated apology for the behavior of the first half of this century. Lynching was made illegal by the civil rights act of 1968.
 
When reading your question, I did a google search on 'legal lynching'.
From what I found, I could make out that the term was recently used, not meaning real lynching, but having racist prejudices against minority groups, like black americans. Like when a crime is committed, and a white and a black man are suspects, it is almost taken for granted the black man did it.

Maybe the segment you heard was about a law against those prejudices?
 
HI Eevee,

No, actually the news showed pictures of black people hanging from trees and bridges and such. SO it was about lynching black people. Quite distrurbing. :(

I forgot to share a passage I came across documented in the 1930's from a slave named Mingo White. So much of what he tells in this small passage fits my own memories as Clara. After reviewing a lot of them - it seems this was common. He was born 18 years after me - but was sold - taken in a wagon and never saw his mother or father again.

My birth place wuz in Chester, S. Carolina. A very little uv my life wuz spent there. I wuz raised in Alabama. When I wuz er bout four or five years old, I remember thet I wuz loaded in er wagon wid er lot more people in. Whar I wuz bound I don know. What ever becom uv my mother and father I don know....Mingo White bron in 1858.
Click to expand...

I was born in Georgia - and taken to Alabama to be a house slave. Never to see my mother again. When I read this account by a slave and his memories...it really hit home. I think I will buy a book or two on the accounts of slaves. They seem to be filled more with the type of information I am looking for.
 
for Debrah

I remembered reading this book more than once when I was a teenager, about slavery and the life of a young girl slave whose father was the plantation owner. She had a half sister (all white) the same age as her and they looked enough alike for it to be a problem. I just looked it up, and I know you would love to read it. I found it here: http://print.google.com/
The book is Jubilee by Margaret Walker - Fiction - 1999 - 512 pages
I don't know why is says 1999 unless it is a reprint, because I read it in the '70s lol. It is fiction I believe. I remember when I was reading it, I couldn't put it down and hated that it had to end.

Anyway, you can read at least the first few pages of it from that site, I don't know if you can read the whole book online or not. It really goes into details about how the slaves and the plantation owners lived.

If you aren't interested in that book, it looks like you can read parts of almost any book there. I hope you enjoy it!
:)
Donna
 
Deborah said:
I am currently working on the research part of my memories as a black slave girl named Clara who was sold at eight years old. I came across a very interesting image.

In the early 1990's I did several meditations were I remembered vividly living with my "momma" - in a small wooden structure, that to me now resembles a shack but then was our home. My momma was so proud of it. One door, one window and wood planks for walls --- all weather worn. I am hoping my attachment works so you can see an image of one;

The text found on the website The Lives of American Slaves in South Carolina describes them briefly- as I remember them. I am looking for more images and references regarding the homes and life of slaves during this time. I remember several homes of other black families all lined up -behind the back of the plantation. Ours was just one of many.



I also had never heard the term "Momma"...used for mother...anywhere. But another site confirmed my memory - black children often referred to their mothers as Momma. I was sold in 1848 - never to see her again. Another website confirmed that most black children were sold before the age of twelve. What a difficult life.

Are any of you researching your memories of being a black slave in the south during or before the Civil War? I am having a heck of a time since I had no last name and was only referred to as Clara B. It was common for slaves to have no surnames- if they did, it was their masters.

I am finding loads of information that confirms many of my memories. The only Clara that I can find was a house servant and owned by Joseph Robinson in Charlston SC. She..like me had no last name. And like so many - there does not seem to be any website links for further information.

Anyone have any clues - suggestions? Thoughts?
Click to expand...

Well, i hope you're having luck! I have always had very strong hatred against slavery that goes way back (i think i was one of the earlier slaves or something, maybe even a slave back in ancient egypt.) my family has owned slaves (back in the 1700's) for our english plantation... but i disliked it greatly. I tried just to treat them like people... this also related later in me sticking by Abe and supporting his cause that i knew would change the world.
i'd love to hear more about your life as being a slave. Do you have any idea (it sounds like you do) of where you lived and what time period?
 
Elese,

Here is a thread with Deborah's memories of her life as Clara. It's very interesting, I hope you enjoy reading it!

I was a slave owner.. Or a slave owner's daughter :( .

Karoliina
 
Thank you for the book link Donna. I will check it out. :)

Thank you Karoliina for forwarding Elese to other links about Clara. Karoliina, and Elese, my father now was the plantation owners son in 1948 -. He befriended many of us, and his death in the Civil War affected us all deeply. We considered him to be our friend. The color of our skin did not matter to him and he often took the blame for things - so his father would not have us whiped.
 
Deborah,

I wish I had memories like that, but if I was who I think I was, and if I remember correctly, I was very indifferent toward slaves. I didn't really hate them, but I wasn't compassionate either - they just were there :( .

Karoliina
 
Do any of our members live near Oklahoma City? Does anyone know of a black community near Oklahoma City 1870 -1920? Any links that provide information about the history and or migration of slaves to Oklahoma after the Civil War?
 
Slavery

Deborah: Thank goodness you're still here. I'm new to this forum and was just reading all the posts, but realized they were back in '05. I do not live near OK, sorry. But thank you for all the posts. I'm engrossed.

I was a witness to regressions of a friend to a lifetime in Mississippi which involved the Civil War, and also slavery. She was not a slave, but was presented one about her own age when she was a child. They were best friends, and perhaps I'll have a chance to post some of that at a later time.

I've also noticed your paintings, and they're beautiful. Regards, Patsy
 
Hi Patsy -

So nice of you to post. :):):) Thank you for checking out my art work linked to my signature. I appreciate it.:D

A lot of us have been here for years; if you look under my avatar you will see the join date and post count. You can see that for all our members.

I am so glad you found us; it must be hard living in the Bible belt -- as you mentioned in another thread. Just remember -you are not alone and I bet there are more that believe in it than you know.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top