Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History

by Gregory D. Smithers

For over two centuries, the topic of slave breeding has occupied a controversial place in the master narrative of American history. From nineteenth-century abolitionists to twentieth-century filmmakers and artists, Americans have debated whether slave owners deliberately and coercively manipulated the sexual practices and marital status of enslaved African Americans to reproduce new generations of slaves for profit.

In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices. He argues that while social and economic historians have downplayed the significance of slave breeding, African Americans have refused to forget the violence and sexual coercion associated with the plantation South. By placing African American histories and memories of slave breeding within the larger context of America’s history of racial and gender discrimination, Smithers sheds much-needed light on African American collective memory, racialized perceptions of fragile black families, and the long history of racially motivated violence against men, women, and children of color.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, African American, American, American History

271 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 1, 2012

Reviews

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gregory Smithers offers an interpretation of how African Americans and Americans have approached the topic of slave breeding. Smithers argues that while white America and many historians have been reluctant to acknowledge its existence and central role in both perpetuating slavery and racism, African Americans have both highlighted and minimized its significance. The first chapters of Slave Breeding, Smithers focuses on the rhetoric around slave breeding through the Reconstruction era, the second half calls attention to the various ways the theme has emerged in African American and popular culture. An interesting study of popular memory and slavery.

[Anastasia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super informative esp in context of gender and race as we see them currently

[Melinda Hunter · Rating 5 out of 5]

A deep dive

This book revealed past relationships to current issues. Understanding the history of slavery in America is key to progress for African Americans.

[York · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very difficult book to read for those unacquainted with the history of chattel slavery in the American South, but a very good one. Smithers draws upon the WPA slave narratives in addition to popular memory and the thinly veiled sentiments of slaveowner's publications to reveal a shocking truth about the dehumanization of Black slaves in the antebellum period. Although the WPA sources are flawed, and there are problems with how the book belabors certain points while dropping others, one cannot deny the psychological impact slave breeding had on its descendants. Knowing that one was the product of what amounts to sexual assault is a trauma that has been carried down the line, whispered memories of grandfathers and grandmothers reduced to their reproductive organs and the shame of loving relationships being ignored by owners who saw them as worth nothing more than cattle. Smither's work is extremely important in tearing apart myths of benevolent plantations and paternal owners.