African American Women Before The Emancipation

The treatment of African American women before the emancipation was horrendous. All African Americans were of course slaves, but the women faced more severe treatment then the men did. Women were raped and used for there economic value in childbearing as well as "in the fields" so to speak. Their children were taken from them to be sold off to a life of slavery, often never to be seen again. The United States government had declared the offspring of slaves as property of the mothers slave owner and could be used in the same manner as all other slaves, as economic units. In the slave society women had the same value as the men, they did the same amount of work, and suffered greater. This held true in the slave family system as well. Women and men did the household chores, the gardening, the hunting, the childrearing and so on. Women did do the majority of childrearing but this was because children were identified with their mother's, as they had no property, they were property.

In white bourgeois society this was not at all the case. The men "worked", and ran their businesses, many slave owning, while the women "took care" of the house and children as she was capable of doing. Slaves were free labor for both men and women of the white bourgeois class, therefore having them emancipated would be bad for business and for the way of running a great number of households. The bourgeoisie, men and their wives all stood to gain from the separateness of the African American race, and to keep African Americans "beneath" them was essential, thus racism was made very prevalent in all of society. In the marriage structure of the white bourgeoisie, the women were the property of the men; this did give rise to an opportunity of identification between white women and African American women in later years.

After the emancipation of the slaves, African American women's position didn't really change all that drastically for a very long time, neither did the position of the men for that matter. African Americans joined the ranks of the proletariat, the wage laborer, with less right to political influence and property then white upper class women. The women's suffrage movement and the emancipation movement merged, in that white upper class women were fighting alongside African Americans for the emancipation while trying to gain political clout. Racism was still very prevalent in society at that time and it crept into the women's movement. African Americans were still being seen as lesser in the eyes of the white bourgeoisie women, male or female. White upper class women fought for sterilization of the lower classes and minorities, as well as to keep there economic position and their political influence nonexistent. African American women still worked alongside their men, and shared all chores and responsibilities in the family. They still suffered though this time it was because they were being sterilized and kept living in squalor. They received a menial wage which was usually taken from them, but they were no longer slaves. Despite all that was taken from them in the years after the emancipation the freedom of opportunity was now there for them to build on and over the years (all oppressed people) African Americans did progress. I am not about to say that racism or class bias, or gender bias has been eradicated but since the emancipation of the slaves we have made a great many advances and despite popular jokes to the contrary, we as people are still advancing.

Sources:

Women Race and Class

By Angela Davis

Published by First Vintage Books Edition, February 1983