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A house slave was a slave who worked, and often lived, in the house of the slave-owner, performing domestic labor. House slaves performed essentially the same duties as all domestic workers throughout history, such as cooking, cleaning, serving meals, and caring for children; however, their slave status could expose them to more significant abuses, including physical punishments and use as a sexual slave.
In classical antiquity, many civilizations had house slaves.
The study of slavery in Ancient Greece remains a complex subject, in part because of the many different levels of servility, from traditional chattel slavery through various forms of serfdom, such as Helots, Penestai, and several other classes of a non-citizen.
Athens had various categories of slave, such as:
Houseborn slaves (oikogeneis) often constituted a privileged class. They were, for example, entrusted to take the children to school; they were "pedagogues" in the first sense of the term. [1] Some of them were the offspring of the master of the house, but in most cities, notably Athens, a child inherited the status of its mother. [2]
The Greeks did not breed their slaves during the Classical Era. However, the proportion of house-born slaves seems to have been relatively large in Ptolemaic Egypt and in manumission inscriptions at Delphi. [3] Sometimes, the cause of this was natural; mines, for instance, were exclusively a male domain.
Also known as a writer of Socratic dialogues, Xenophon advised that male and female slaves should be lodged separately, that "nor children born and bred by our domestics without our knowledge and consent—no unimportant matter, since, if the act of rearing children tends to make good servants still more loyally disposed, cohabiting but sharpens ingenuity for mischief in the bad." [4] The explanation is perhaps economic; even a skilled slave was cheap, [5] so it may have been cheaper to purchase a slave than to raise one. [6] Additionally, childbirth placed the enslaved mother's life at risk, and the baby was not guaranteed to survive to adulthood. [2]
A house slave appears in the Socratic dialogue, Meno, which was written by Plato. At the beginning of the dialogue, the slave's master, Meo, fails to benefit from Socratic teaching and reveals himself to be intellectually savage. Socrates turns to the house-slave, who is a boy ignorant of geometry. The boy acknowledges his ignorance, learns from his mistakes, and finally establishes proof of the desired geometric theorem. This is another example of the slave appearing more clever than his master, a popular theme in Greek literature.
The comedies of Menander show how the Athenians preferred to view a house slave: as an enterprising and unscrupulous rascal, who must use his wits to profit from his master, rescue him from his troubles, or gain him the girl of his dreams. We have most of these plays in translations by Plautus and Terence, suggesting that the Romans liked the same genre.
And the same sort of tale has not yet become extinct, as the popularity of Jeeves and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum attest.
House slaves existed in the New World.
In Haiti, before leading the Haitian Revolution, Toussaint Louverture had been a house slave.
Toussaint is thought to have been born on the plantation of Bréda at Haut de Cap in Saint-Domingue, owned by the Comte de Noé and later managed by Bayon de Libertat. [7] Tradition says that he was a driver and horse trainer on the plantation. His master freed him at age 33 when Toussaint married Suzanne. [8] He was a fervent Catholic, and a member of high degree of the Masonic Lodge of Saint-Domingue. [9] [10] In 1790 slaves in the Plaine du Flowera rose in rebellion. Different forces coalesced under different leaders. Toussaint served with other leaders and rose in responsibility. On 4 April 1792, the French Legislative Assembly extended full rights of citizenship to free people of color or mulattoes (gens de couleur libres) and free blacks.
In many households, the treatment of slaves varied to the slave's skin color. Darker-skinned slaves worked in the fields, while lighter-skinned house servants had comparatively better clothing, food and housing. [11] Referred to as "house negroes", they had a higher status and standard of living than a field slave or "field negro" who worked outdoors.
As in Thomas Jefferson's household, the presence of lighter-skinned slaves as household servants was not merely an issue of skin color. Sometimes planters used mixed-race slaves as house servants or favored artisans because they were their children or other relatives. Several of Jefferson's household slaves were possibly children of his father-in-law John Wayles and the enslaved woman Betty Hemings, who Jefferson's wife inherited upon her father's death. In turn, Jefferson had sexual relations with the daughter of Betty and John Wayles Sally Hemings, the half-sister to Thomas Jefferson's wife. The Hemings children grew up to be closely involved in Jefferson's household staff activities. Two sons trained as carpenters. Three of his four surviving mixed-race children with Sally Hemings passed into white society as adults. [12]
The term "house negro" appears in print by 1711. On 21 May of that year, The Boston News-Letter advertised that "A Young House-Negro Wench of 19 Years of Age that speaks English to be Sold." [13] In a 1771 letter, a Maryland slave-owner compared the lives of his slaves to those of "house negroes" and "plantation negroes", refuting an accusation that his slaves were poorly fed by saying they were fed as well as "plantation negroes", though not as well as the "house negroes". [13] [14] In 1807, a report of the African Institution of London described an incident in which an old woman was required to work in the field after she refused to throw salt-water and gunpowder on the wounds of other slaves who had been whipped. According to the report, she had previously enjoyed a favored status as a "house negro". [15]
Margaret Mitchell made use of the term to describe a slave named Pork in her famed 1936 Southern plantation fiction, Gone With the Wind . [16]
African-American activist Malcolm X commented on the cultural connotations and consequences of the term in his 1963 speech "Message to the Grass Roots", wherein he explained that during slavery, there were two types of slaves: "house negroes" who worked in the master's house, and "field negroes" who performed outdoor manual labor. He characterized the house negro as having a better life than the field negro, thus being unwilling to leave the plantation and potentially more likely to support existing power structures that favored whites over blacks. Malcolm X identified with the field negro. [17]
House negro has been used in the contemporary era as a pejorative term to compare a contemporary black person to such a slave. The term has been used to demean individuals, [18] [19] in critiques of attitudes within the African-American community, especially against politically right-leaning African-Americans, [20] and as a borrowed term in contemporary social critique. [21]
In New Zealand in 2012, Hone Harawira, a Member of Parliament and leader of the socialist Mana Party, aroused controversy after referring to Maori MPs from the ruling New Zealand National Party as "little house niggers" during a heated debate on electricity privatisation, and Waitangi Tribunal claims. [22]
In June 2017, comedian Bill Maher used the term self-referentially during a live broadcast interview with Ben Sasse, saying, "Work in the fields? Senator, I'm a house nigger [...]. It's a joke!" [23] Maher apologized for the comment. [24]
In April 2018, Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor used the term during a dispute with a bank teller. When the teller refused to cash a check for insufficient funds, Taylor called the teller a "house nigger". Both Taylor and the teller are African Americans. [25]
François-Dominique Toussaint Louverture also known as Toussaint L'Ouverture or Toussaint Bréda, was a Haitian general and the most prominent leader of the Haitian Revolution. During his life, Louverture first fought and allied with Spanish forces against Saint-Domingue Royalists, then joined with Republican France, becoming Governor-General-for-life of Saint-Domingue, and lastly fought against Bonaparte's republican troops. As a revolutionary leader, Louverture displayed military and political acumen that helped transform the fledgling slave rebellion into a revolutionary movement. Along with Jean-Jacques Dessalines, Louverture is now known as one of the "Fathers of Haiti".
Jean-Jacques Dessalines was the first Haitian Emperor, leader of the Haitian Revolution, and the first ruler of an independent Haiti under the 1805 constitution. Initially regarded as governor-general, Dessalines was later named Emperor of Haiti as Jacques I (1804–1806) by generals of the Haitian Revolutionary army and ruled in that capacity until being assassinated in 1806. He spearheaded the resistance against French massacres upon Haitians, and eventually became the architect of the 1804 Haitian Massacre against the remaining French residents of Haiti, including some supporters of the revolution. Alongside Toussaint Louverture, he has been referred to as one of the fathers of the nation of Haiti.
Saint-Domingue was a French colony in the western portion of the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, in the area of modern-day Haiti, from 1697 to 1804. The name derives from the Spanish main city on the island, Santo Domingo, which came to refer specifically to the Spanish-held Captaincy General of Santo Domingo, now the Dominican Republic. The borders between the two were fluid and changed over time until they were finally solidified in the Dominican War of Independence in 1844.
"Children of the plantation" is a euphemism used to refer to people with ancestry tracing back to the time of slavery in the United States in which the offspring was born to black African female slaves in the context of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Non-Black men, usually the slave's owner, one of the owner's relatives, or the plantation overseer. These children were often considered to be the property of the slave owner and were often subjected to the same treatment as other slaves on the plantation. Many of these children were born into slavery and had no legal rights, as they were not recognized as the legitimate children of their fathers. The men who fathered these children often used their power and authority to force themselves upon the black females who were under their control.
In the context of the history of slavery in the Americas, free people of color were primarily people of mixed African, European, and Native American descent who were not enslaved. However, the term also applied to people born free who were primarily of black African descent with little mixture. They were a distinct group of free people of color in the French colonies, including Louisiana and in settlements on Caribbean islands, such as Saint-Domingue (Haiti), St. Lucia, Dominica, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. In these territories and major cities, particularly New Orleans, and those cities held by the Spanish, a substantial third class of primarily mixed-race, free people developed. These colonial societies classified mixed-race people in a variety of ways, generally related to visible features and to the proportion of African ancestry. Racial classifications were numerous in Latin America.
Martha Skelton Jefferson was the wife of Thomas Jefferson from 1772 until her death. She served as First Lady of Virginia during Jefferson's term as governor from 1779 to 1781. She died in 1782, 19 years before he became president.
The Haitian Revolution was a successful insurrection by self-liberated slaves against French colonial rule in Saint-Domingue, now the sovereign state of Haiti.
William Wells Brown was an American abolitionist, novelist, playwright, and historian. Born into slavery near Mount Sterling, Kentucky, Brown escaped to Ohio in 1834 at the age of 19. He settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where he worked for abolitionist causes and became a prolific writer. While working for abolition, Brown also supported causes including: temperance, women's suffrage, pacifism, prison reform, and an anti-tobacco movement. His novel Clotel (1853), considered the first novel written by an African American, was published in London, England, where he resided at the time. It was later published in the United States.
Partus sequitur ventrem was a legal doctrine passed in colonial Virginia in 1662 and other English crown colonies in the Americas which defined the legal status of children born there; the doctrine mandated that children of enslaved mothers would inherit the legal status of their mothers. As such, children of enslaved women would be born into slavery. The legal doctrine of partus sequitur ventrem was derived from Roman civil law, specifically the portions concerning slavery and personal property (chattels), as well as the common law of personal property; analogous legislation existed in other civilizations including Medieval Egypt in Africa and Korea in Asia.
The Haitian Revolution and the subsequent independence of Haiti as an independent state provoked mixed reactions in the United States. Among many white Americans, this led to uneasiness, instilling fears of racial instability on its own soil and possible problems with foreign relations and trade between the two countries. Among enslaved black Americans, it fueled hope that the principles of the recent American Revolution might be realized in their own liberation. While the Haitian Revolution was occurring during the presidencies of George Washington and John Adams, members of the Federalist Party including Alexander Hamilton supported Toussaint Louverture and his revolution. John Adams appointed Edward Stevens as US consul-general to Haiti to forge a closer relationship between the two nations and express US support for Louverture's government.
Madison Hemings was the son of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. He was the third of Sally Hemings’ four children to survive to adulthood. Born into slavery, according to partus sequitur ventrem, Hemings grew up on Jefferson's Monticello plantation, where his mother was also enslaved. After some light duties as a young boy, Hemings became a carpenter and fine woodwork apprentice at around age 14 and worked in the joiner's shop until he was about 21. He learned to play the violin and was able to earn money by growing cabbages. Jefferson died in 1826, after which Sally Hemings was "given her time" by Jefferson's surviving daughter Martha Jefferson Randolph.
Mary Hemings Bell was born into slavery, most likely in Charles City County, Virginia, as the oldest child of Elizabeth Hemings, a mixed-race slave held by John Wayles. After the death of Wayles in 1773, Elizabeth, Mary, and her family were inherited by Thomas Jefferson, the husband of Martha Wayles Skelton, a daughter of Wayles, and all moved to Monticello.
Elizabeth Hemings was a female slave of mixed-ethnicity in colonial Virginia. With her owner, planter John Wayles, she had six children, including Sally Hemings. These children were three-quarters white, and, following the condition of their mother, they were considered slaves from birth; they were half-siblings to Wayles's daughter, Martha Jefferson. After Wayles died, the Hemings family and some 120 other slaves were inherited, along with 11,000 acres and £4,000 debt, as part of his estate by his daughter Martha and her husband Thomas Jefferson.
Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States, owned more than 600 slaves during his adult life. Jefferson freed two slaves while he lived, and five others were freed after his death, including two of his children from his relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. His other two children with Hemings were allowed to escape without pursuit. After his death, the rest of the slaves were sold to pay off his estate's debts.
John Wayles was a colonial American planter, slave trader and lawyer in colonial Virginia. He is historically best known as the father-in-law of Thomas Jefferson, the third president of the United States. Wayles married three times, with these marriages producing eleven children; only five of them lived to adulthood. Through Betty Hemings, a woman he enslaved, Wayles fathered six additional children, including Sally Hemings, who was the mother of six children by Thomas Jefferson and half-sister of Martha Jefferson.
Slavery in Virginia began with the capture and enslavement of Native Americans during the early days of the English Colony of Virginia and through the late eighteenth century. They primarily worked in tobacco fields. Africans were first brought to colonial Virginia in 1619, when 20 Africans from present-day Angola arrived in Virginia aboard the ship The White Lion.
Buckra or Backra is a term of West African origin. It is mainly used in the Caribbean and the Southeast United States. Originally, it was used by slaves to address their white owners. Later, the meaning was broadened to generally describe white people.
The treatment of slaves in the United States often included sexual abuse and rape, the denial of education, and punishments like whippings. Families were often split up by the sale of one or more members, usually never to see or hear of each other again.
Edith Hern Fossett (1787–1854) was an African American chef who for much of her life was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson before being freed. Three generations of her family, the Herns, worked in Jefferson's fields, performed domestic and leadership duties, and made tools. Like Hern, they also took care of children. She cared for Harriet Hemings, the daughter of Sally Hemings, at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello plantation when she was a girl.
A shadow family was an unacknowledged child or children created by a white male slave owner with a female black slave. Often they lived in physical proximity to their father, and a "married maverick reared a white family in the front of the house even as he reared a mulatto family in the back."
Mr. Maher said: "Work in the fields? Senator, I'm a house nigger. No, it's a joke."