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Example research essay topic: Black And White Black Women - 1,268 words

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... mes from a much smaller pool than did men, the pool of black names had a diversity to begin with only eventually matched by white families who added new names their intermarriages. That black women shared the same names more frequently than black men parallels the pattern of the white community. Slave names were more diminutive of white names, for example Betty for Elizabeth. White women also were known by diminutive names such as Sally, Patsy, and Nancy.

Diminutives were share by both black and white women. Owners distinguished between black and white female names by changing the form of their names or choosing names for slaves not used by whites. Control over who would name the slave was an indicator of the power of the relationship that existed between the owner and the slave. Childbirth is an experience that women of all races can experience, but are kept separate.

Pregnancy, childbearing, and nursing were all common activities taking place on the plantations. White women mad childbirth a community event, accompanied with the rituals and support by other women, and that these rituals of lying-in were shared with black women. The risks of childbirth were greater for black women than white women. Although they may have participated in the rituals surrounding childbirth, black women were the center of attention less frequently because they had fewer children; moreover participation in this womans culture required them to abandon some of their African traditions. Black women had fewer children per month than white women did. Black women usually conceived between the months of May through October.

White conceptions were heavy in the fall and early spring and lowest in the fall. Blacks were lowest in the deep winter. Black women were in the later stages of pregnancy during the heavy labor season of spring planting. Surely this affected their health.

The work patterns of black women fostered the high death rate among their children by exhausting mothers and making infant care difficult. White women expected their children to survive through adulthood. Black women did not. Slaves and owners in both of these areas preferred daytime arrangements for slave infant care that kept mothers and infants close to one another, because infants did not thrive when deprived of a mothers breast in the days before sterilization made bottle feeding practical.

Keeping nursing mothers from their babies was the most practical solution to the problem of maintaining the mothers productivity while meeting the nutritional needs of the infant. Slave infants who fed regularly at the breast of their white mistresses were uncommon but not unknown. The need for a wet nurse by the white family put an additional strain on a breastfeeding mother, who might find herself nursing another child in addition to her own (African American Negro, Allen Weinstein, pg. 89). Work both separated and brought black women together with whites. In some areas, white women were not counted in figuring the tithes.

They only appeared on the tithe list when widowed with slaves or male children sixteen-years-old or older. On the other hand, black women were counted. It is easier to trace black women in the community because they are listed on the tithe year to year than it is to do so for white women. Eventually in 1769, free black women received the same exemption as white women, but slave women remained a part of the tithe. In other words, black women were considered part of the agricultural labor force in a way white women were not. White women seldom worked away from home, black women sometimes did Slave rentals kept the labor supply flexible, cut cost for care by owners, and provided an income for widows and orphans.

Women slaves were hired out more frequently than men. Thus black women might be separated from family and friends in order to secure the income that allowed a white woman to remain on the family farm. Black women worked with white women in the production of cloth on small farms, thus providing another way in which a community of women cut across racial lines. Through churches, slave women expressed their sense of self-worth and personhood.

Slave women appeared mostly in Methodist churches, but usually are seen through the filter of white clergymen. These men did not hold some Anglo-American prejudices about black women. Ministers used phrases like he speaks well for a Negro. White minister also believed that a godly family was male-headed and that women are the weaker sex. There is no evidence that early Methodist preachers ever spoke publicly against sexual abuse and rape of slave women by white men.

It is said that Methodist preachers freed more women than men. Some women were free by Methodist owners outright. Others were freed after a period of service in which Methodist owners recouped their expenses. The Methodist preachers rarely blamed the slave women for their actions or appearance.

When ministers commented on inadequate slave dress, they faulted slave owners for maltreatment (Discovering the Women in Slavery, Patricia Morton, pg. 204). Black women offered themselves and children for baptism, and a few were married by a church. Black women gave money to the church, even those who only had a little to give. The church consoled black women in illness and suffering. Slave and free black women praised, shouted, and testified in love feasts, services and classes. Although black women frequently prayed in public, there is no evidence that they ever lead a congregation.

Most free black and slave women were denied leadership roles in the church from the outside in (Bernard pg. 56). Slave owners recognized that black families existed, the value of slaves as property meant that black family stability was tied to the life cycle of their owners. In a way they incorporated the mother of the black family into their family. This is what was called a mammy.

The word mammy evokes strong and ambiguous feelings, especially in its racial overtones and implications and the confusing message of female sexuality and motherhood. The mammy in contrast to the stereotype of the loose young black woman, was represented as a sexual nonthreatening older black woman in intimate contact with white children and part of the white families. Her success in mothering white children implies neglect on the part of the white mother who used a black mammy to care for her children. The relationship between the mammy and the children was very strong. The white children were very devoted to her.

They cared for her when she got old and after slavery times. Many former slave women had had the experience of assisting in the care of the white children of their masters while they were children or teenagers themselves (Southern Women, Bernhard, Brandon, Fox-Genovese, and Perdue, pg. 89). Although it seems that the black slave women and the white women kept themselves distant from each other, they really were not. They sometimes worked together and even nursed the others child. The black slave even took care of her children and was called what we know today as a mammy. Not everyone was against slaves and believed in slavery.

The Methodist church supported them in many ways (Perdue pg. 97). Bibliography: Bernhard, Virginia. Southern Women. University if Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201, 1992. Catherine Clinton. Women and the Family in a Slave Society.

Garland Publishing Inc. , New York & London, 1989. Morton, Patricia. Discovering the Women in Slavery. The University of Georgia Press, 1996. Weinstein, Allen. American Negro Slavery.

New York Oxford University Press, 1979. Autobiography of a female Slave. Mnemosyne Publishing Company Inc. , 1969


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Research essay sample on Black And White Black Women

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