You are a female slave in the rural American South. Born
into the institution, slavery is the only life you know. From the time you
reached the age of logic and reasoning, societal surroundings have instilled
notions of ignorance and inferiority into your dogmata. You are not a human being. You are property
and a price tag is put on your very existence. When the pressures of plantation
life become too hard to bear, you decide to take a little vacation into the
backwoods; however, you are caught. You are raped and beaten unmercifully with
a whip. Salt is poured into the wounds
left behind from the lashes for an added sting. Lesson learned. You are the
white man’s prisoner.
A few years later you are married and expecting a child. In
your eyes, child birth is a miracle, a gift from The Big Man Upstairs. However,
you know from the day this child is born it will live in a world where it will
never be free. It will be considered property and yet another price tag will be
placed upon someone’s existence. If it acts un-accordingly, it will be beaten,
killed, or sold. Your miracle will live a life damned from hell. The
inevitability of slavery is a fate worse than death itself. Nine months to the
date, you have a little girl. Her eyes hold a sense of blissful, ignorance that
is naïve to the life she has been cursed with. Flashbacks from your plight as a
slave permeate your mind. Is this the type of life you want your gift from the
divine to live? Unconventional thoughts trigger tears that flood your eyes. What
is the lesser of the two evils? Do I let my child live to endure this hated
life and experience the evils of a world from which I know I cannot protect
her? Or do I end this life so delicate before it really has the chance to live?
Unfortunately the decision to end the life of their precious
new bourns was a sad reality for several slave mothers throughout the South.
Especially with the birth of little girls, some female slaves believed that
seeing their daughters’ lives fall to the will of white male plantation owners
was far worse than taking away their forsaken lives after the birth. If you
were a female slave engrossed in a world of white supremacy, how would you
handle the sake of your children?
Taylor this vivid image of the situation that some women had to go through during this time is heart wrenching. As I try to imagine what I would do in this instance, it is almost impossible to decide. My gut feeling would be to alleviate them from the situation, however, I am not sure if I would be strong enough. The closest thing I could compare it to right now would be my niece and two nephews. Even the though of that is sickening, let alone if it were my own child. I commend those women that were strong enough and selfless enough to do what I would not be able to and take the life of my own child.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Kristen. You did a great job of making it feel real. Clearly, I am not a woman but the way you wrote this made me really think about the tough decisions these women faced. If I were her, I would probably have kept the child if only to have companionship and something to love through the rough times with the hope that slavery would end in her lifetime. I know for a majority of slaves that did not happen but on the off chance this baby girl was born in 1859, I would want to have her experience the joy, alongside me, in receiving my freedom.
ReplyDeleteWow. Seeing the images flow through my mind so vividly causes me to want to save and protect my child from this harsh world of slavery before she has the displeasure of experiencing it. However, like many others, I know I won't have the strength to do it. In this instance, I can only teach my child the ways of life in order to lessen the pain that she will experience later on in life. As an African American woman, I can see that mothers teach their daughters the ways of the world. Although we don't have the burden of slavery today, mothers teach other things of importance to aid in survival in the world. If I were a slave, I would naturally do the same.
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