While some women attempted not to become mothers, and a minority were unable to reproduce, most women negotiated childbirth and raising children within the confines of the slave regime, and they took a lot of care in raising their daughters to survive enslavement as females.
It included coerced sexual relations between enslaved men and women or girls, forced pregnancies of enslaved women, and favoring women or young girls who could produce a relatively large number of children.
Mothers were taken from their own children to nurse the offspring of their masters. And slave children were torn from mothers and brought into the house to be raised alongside the master's sons and daughters.
Slavery in America traumatized and devastated millions of people. Husbands and wives, parents and children, could not protect themselves from being sold away from each other. Enslaved families were separated at an owner's or auctioneer's whim, never to see each other again.
The risk of sale in the international slave trade peaked between the ages of fifteen and twenty five, but the vulnerability of being sold began as early as age eight and certainly by the age of ten, when enslaved children could work competently on the fields.
As a result of this high infant and childhood death rate, the average life expectancy of a slave at birth was just 21 or 22 years, compared to 40 to 43 years for antebellum whites. Compared to whites, relatively few slaves lived into old age.
During their limited leisure hours, particularly on Sundays and holidays, slaves engaged in singing and dancing. Though slaves used a variety of musical instruments, they also engaged in the practice of "patting juba" or the clapping of hands in a highly complex and rhythmic fashion.
Ironically, blacks were prevented from obtaining legal marriages while enslaved, but they were "disproportionately punished" if they lived together without being married once they were free. Being married had become a moral and legal requirement for blacks in American society.
Slaves often found themselves rented out, used as prizes in lotteries, or as wagers in card games and horse races. Separation from family and friends was probably the greatest fear a black person in slavery faced. When a master died, his slaves were often sold for the benefit of his heirs.
Slaves could not testify in court against a white, make contracts, leave the plantation without permission, strike a white (even in self-defense), buy and sell goods, own firearms, gather without a white present, possess any anti-slavery literature, or visit the homes of whites or free blacks.
At the age of sixteen, enslaved boys and girls were considered full-fledged workers, tasked as farm laborers or forced into trades.
Slaves might attempt to run away for a number of reasons: to escape cruel treatment, to join a revolt or to meet with friends and families on neighbouring plantations. Families were not necessarily kept together by those who bought and sold them.
There were numerous restrictions to enforce social control: slaves could not be away from their owner's premises without permission; they could not assemble unless a white person was present; they could not own firearms; they could not be taught to read or write, or transmit or possess “inflammatory” literature.
Slaves were punished by whipping, shackling, hanging, beating, burning, mutilation, branding, rape, and imprisonment.
Many slaves suffered from dysentery, dropsy, fevers, and digestive and nervous diseases. Yaws, a non-venereal form of syphilis, was common, and there were regular epidemics, such as a cholera epidemic in Grenada in 1830.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared "that all persons held as slaves" within the rebellious states "are, and henceforward shall be free."
What did slaves fear more than physical punishment? Separation from their families.
The enslavement of Africans for eastern markets started before 7th century but remained at low levels until 1750. The trade volume peaked around 1850 but would largely have ended around 1900.
Although the enslaved Africans were permitted provision grounds and gardens in the villages to grow food, these were not enough to stop them suffering from starvation in times of poor harvests.
Positions like carpenters, blacksmiths, bricklayers, and engineers gave the slaves the opportunity for greater mobility than women.” Females would cook, do house work and take care of the children they bore while males would do hard labor such as plowmen, drivers and many more.
In 18th-century America, the typical age of marriage for middle-to-upper class white women was 22 and 26 for men. Women began courting as early as 15 or 16, but most delayed marriage until their early twenties.
some slaves wore their hair long and bushy on top and ...others cut it short, or combed and parted it neatly, or shaved it at the back or at the front, or trimmed it to a roll.
During the fighting, in 1863, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. This document freed all enslaved people in the Confederate states. In 1865 the Confederacy was defeated. Then slavery was abolished in the United States by the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.
Running away carried heavy risks. If runaways were caught, they would be physically punished, usually by whipping, and might be made to wear chains or handcuffs to prevent them from running again. But if an escape was successful, they did not just gain their freedom.