In her “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women in the Middle West”, Darlene Clark Hine analyzes an issue that is rarely discussed in the American society. She examines in her essay the ways that black women are oppressed and silenced, they are not only oppressed by the white community but also the black men at home. This oppression from everywhere around them causes them to form the culture of dissemblance. The oppression and unequal opportunities in society is also the reason many black women migrated to the North in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. The North provided them they voice that these black women were seeking. Thus, Hine specifically examines the silencing of black women within social, domestic and activist spaces. She …show more content…
While black women faced discrimination outside of homes, situations at home were not very good for them either. Black women had to deal with domestic abuse and threats of being raped within households. While examining the reason for black women migrating to the North, Hine states, “I believe that many black women quit the South out of a desire to achieve personal autonomy and to escape both from sexual exploitation from inside and outside of their families and from the rape and threat of rape by white as well as Black males”(Hine 914). The black women not only had to fear being raped by the white men, which were usually the homeowners where the black women worked, but they also had to come home to the same demeaning environment. These black men had to face racial discrimination as well in society, which frustrated them. The black men used the women as a way of taking out their anger and frustration, they would often beat and sexual abuse women in their families. The issue of rape and sexuality seems to be a critical problem for black women. Hine points out, “virtually every known nineteenth-century female slavery narrative contains a reference to, at some juncture, the ever present threat and reality of rape”(912). The threat of rape was not only prominent during the nineteenth century, but also much later during the mid and late twenty century. A famous example that everyone can connect to is …show more content…
The NACW set up training centers which helped unskilled black women learn skills which would potentially help them get better jobs. Education played a key role in black women being able to take control of their own lives and sexuality. Hine identifies, “as Black women became more economically self-sufficient, better educated, and more involved in self-improvement efforts, including participation in the flourishing Black women’s club movement… they had greater access to birth control information”(918). By being better educated, women finally were able to take control of their bodies and sexuality. The black women had more knowledge about their anatomy and their options for birth control, their bodies were no longer properties of men- white or black. This was very important for the black women as most of them moved to the north for sexual freedom. Education broke the silence of the black women by giving them more opportunities in society and giving them control of their own
According to Hunter, the period between 1877 and 1915 is critical to understanding the social transformations in most southern cities and complicating this transformation are the issues of race, class, and gender. The examination of the lives of black domestic workers reveals the complexity of their struggles to keep their autonomy with white employers and city officials. For example, African-American women built institutions and frequently quit their jobs in response to the attempts by southern whites to control their labor and mobility. Hunter carefully situates these individual tactics of resistance in the New South capitalist development and attempts by whites to curtail the political and social freedoms of emancipated slaves. African-American women migrating to Atlanta after the Emancipation found themselve... ...
McGuire, Danielle L. At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance- A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power. New York, New York: Vintage Books. 2011.
The black women’s interaction with her oppressive environment during Revolutionary period or the antebellum America was the only way of her survival. Playing her role, and being part of her community that is not always pleasant takes a lot of courage, and optimism for better tomorrow. The autonomy of a slave women still existed even if most of her natural rights were taken. As opposed to her counterparts
As both Tracey Reynolds and Audre Lorde have emphasized, Black women are not perpetually passive victims, but active agents. It is totally possible for Black women to seize a form of empowerment, whether that be alternative education, or the creation of organizations that weren’t situated in either the Civil Rights movement or Women’s
It is well known that slavery was a horrible event in the history of the United States. However, what isn't as well known is the actual severity of slavery. The experiences of slave women presented by Angela Davis and the theories of black women presented by Patricia Hill Collins are evident in the life of Harriet Jacobs and show the severity of slavery for black women.
Anna Julia Cooper’s, Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress, an excerpt from A Voice from the South, discusses the state of race and gender in America with an emphasis on African American women of the south. She contributes a number of things to the destitute state African American woman became accustom to and believe education and elevation of the black woman would change not only the state of the African American community but the nation as well. Cooper’s analysis is based around three concepts, the merging of the Barbaric with Christianity, the Feudal system, and the regeneration of the black woman.
The practice of slavery for men and women both presented equally sufferings. However, the white planation owners or overseers routinely raped women during this time. Women regularly had their children stripped away from them and sold into slavery. However, ironica...
As the United States grew, the institution of slavery became a way of life in the southern states, while northern states began to abolish it. While the majority of free blacks lived in poverty, some were able to establish successful businesses that helped the Black community. Racial discrimination often meant that Blacks were not welcome or would be mistreated in White businesses and other establishments. A comparison of the narratives of Douglass and Jacobs demonstrates the full range of demands and situations that slaves experienced, and the mistreatment that they experienced as well. Jacobs experienced the ongoing sexual harassment from James Norcom, just like numerous slave women experienced sexual abuse or harassment during the slave era.
The sexual abuse of african-american women, and african women began with slavery, and can be noted as the first shift in inequality and lack of control over one’s own body. The psychological, and physiological construct of control is deeply rooted in history. Slavery, for example, was the physical dehumanization of another human being who was thought to be inferior. Psychologically, the act of physical constraint must have internalized ideas of social dominance. Especially, when slave owners, overseers, and drivers would take advantage of their authority and of their powerful positions to rape enslaved women. After the emancipation of the slaves, white men were no longer in control, and this generated a fear of equality with african-american
The purpose of this investigation is to establish ways in which black women and white women’s involvement in the abolitionist movement influenced the women's movement. The evidence will investigate and identify which events ultimately influenced the women's movement and why the were so influential. Primary and secondary documents will be used and analyzed with respect to their origin, purpose, value and l potential limitations; which will aid in the evaluation of collected evidence. Documents will include books and websites that contain t chronological accounts of important events. Analyzing and summarizing the documents and/or evidence will essentially aid in the formulation of a concluding statement which reveals the ways in which the actions of the women during the time of the civil war influenced the women's’ movement.
Similarly important was the role black women on an individual level played in offering a model for white women to follow. Because black men had a harder time finding employment, black women had a history of working ou...
The feminist movement sought to gain rights for women. Many feminist during the early nineteenth century fought for the abolition of slavery around the world. The slave narrative became a powerful feminist tool in the nineteenth century. Black and white women are fictionalized and objectified in the slave narrative. White women are idealized as pure, angelic, and chaste while black woman are idealized as exotic and contained an uncontrollable, savage sexuality. Harriet Jacobs’ Incidents in the Life of A Slave Girl, brought the sexual oppression of captive black women into the public and political arena.
During the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, notions of freedom for Black slaves and White women were distinctively different than they are now. Slavery was a form of exploitation of black slaves, whom through enslavement, lost their humanity and freedom, and were subjected to dehumanizing conditions. African women and men were often mistreated through similar ways, especially when induced to labor, they would eventually become a genderless individual in the sight of the master. Despite being considered “genderless” for labor, female slaves suddenly became women who endured sexual violence. Although a white woman was superior to the slaves, she had little power over the household, and was restricted to perform additional actions without the consent of their husbands. The enslaved women’s notion to conceive freedom was different, yet similar to the way enslaved men and white women conceived freedom. Black women during slavery fought to resist oppression in order to gain their freedom by running away, rebel against the slaveholders, or by slowing down work. Although that didn’t guarantee them absolute freedom from slavery, it helped them preserve the autonomy and a bare minimum of their human rights that otherwise, would’ve been taken away from them. Black
Brown stresses the importance of recognizing that being a woman is not extractable from the context in which one is a woman. She examines how both black and white women’s lives are shaped by race and gender, and how these affect life choices. Historically, women of color have filled roles previously attributed to white women
The title of this book comes from the inspiring words spoken by Sojourner Truth at the 1851, nine years prior to the Civil War at a Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio. In Deborah Grays White, Ar’n’t I a woman her aim was to enrich the knowledge of antebellum black women and culture to show an unwritten side of history of the American black woman. Being an African- American and being a woman, these are the two principle struggles thrown at the black woman during and after slavery in the United States. Efforts were made by White scholars in 1985 to have a focus on the female slave experience. Deborah Gray White explains her view by categorizing the hardships and interactions between the female slave and the environment in which the slave was born. She starts with the mythology of the female slave by using mythologies such as Jezebel or Mammy, a picture that was painted of false images created by whites in the south. She then moves to differences between male and female slavery the harsh life cycle, the created network among the female community, customs for slave families and the trip from slavery to freedom, as well as differences between the female slave and the white woman, showing that there is more history than myth. (White, 5) Thus, bringing forth the light to the hardships and harassment that the black woman faced in the Antebellum South.