LUANNE
Black woman, early 20's. Curious, eager, and inquisitive. A fellow slave with Sara who has been afforded privileges Sara has not. In an affair with the Master. Pushing for kinship with Sara.
Iyanla Vanzant
“We are women. Everything we do matters. I am not my sister’s keeper. I am my sister.”
Beauty Bias, And The Creation Of Pretty Privilege
image by Elizabeth Colomba
"Let’s be frank: the more attractive society perceives you to be, the more social and economic opportunities you will have. There are many names for this: the beauty premium, beauty bias or just pretty privilege. Conversations around privilege aren’t new. We all know of white privilege, male privilege, class privilege, cis privilege, straight privilege. The Daily Vox breaks down pretty privilege."
-Ebrahim
Luanne
S6/P48
"I know you see me as disgracing my Mama for all she done to keep us free from harm. But what I see is looking for another way to have something. And what I give up to Master is easier than letting' him sneak down here and take it from me anyway."
Luanne
S6/P52
LUANNE Well I guess they can’t have two of us darkies in the Big House overnight. Probably makes ‘em too anxious.
The Fancy Trade and the Commodifification of Rape in the Sexual Economy of 19th Century U.S. Slavery
by Tiye A. Gordon
University of South Carolina
"In my research I will show that the trilogy of ‘pleasure- rape- desire’ is as much a pillar of slavery as coerced labor. I argue that white patriarchy buttressed the rape of enslaved women because it was a means to degrade black femininity and masculinity. When these sexual conquests produced fair complexioned offspring, they further symbolized and reconfirmed white patriarchy. It was sadistic, erotic, and a repetitious cycle fueled by the legal structures and political economies of slave societies. Eventually it manifested into commerce of rape whereby white men could purchase enslaved women for the primary purpose of fulfilling their sexual desires and fantasies."
-Gordon
What Is Fetishization And How Does It Contribute To Racism?
by Janice Gassam Asare for Forbes Magazine
image by Bisa Butler
"For Black, Indigenous, people of color (BIPOC) the fetishization of their race/ethnicity is not a new phenomenon. It is not uncommon for a person on social media to state their dating preferences, and while on the surface it may seem benign and even complimentary, often times these “preferences” can actually reinforce harmful stereotypes that are already held about different groups."
-Asare
Luanne
S8/P76
"I'm only doin' what's necessary. We all gots to do what's necessary."
On Slaveholders’ Sexual Abuse of Slaves Selections from 19th- & 20th-century Slave Narratives
"For many enslaved African Americans, one of the cruelest hardships they endured was sexual abuse by the slave- holders, overseers, and other white men and women whose power to dominate them was complete. Enslaved women were forced to submit to their masters’ sexual advances, perhaps bearing children who would engender the rage of a master’s wife, and from whom they might be separated forever as a result. Masters forcibly paired “good breeders” to produce strong children they could sell at a high price. Resistance brought severe punishment, often death. “I know these facts will seem too awful to relate,” warns former slave William J. Anderson in his 1857 narrative, “. . . as they are some of the real ‘dark deeds of American Slavery.’”
-National Humanities Center
by Leandra Williams
"Inspirational speaker Iyanla Vanzant once said, “We are women. Everything we do matters. I am not my sister’s keeper. I am my sister.” With society disproportionately painting negative images of Black women interacting with one another, it’s no wonder that we continue to have issues with effectively communicating with each other and treating our sisters well. As a Black woman, I strongly feel we want a closer bond with our sisters, but with institutionalized classism, colorism, and ageism, society continues to dictate what we believe Black women should look and act like. Often, this stops us from making a genuine connection with other black women."
-LW
Luanne & Sara
S6/P52
LUANNE Don’t be ugly to me Sara. You ugly enough as it is without doin’ nothin’ extra.
SARA Seem to me ugly is preferable. Pretty is the last thing I want Master to think of me. But that’s just my guess from the outside lookin’ in.
Serena Williams
“The success of every woman should be the inspiration to another. We should raise each other up. Make sure you’re very courageous: be strong, be extremely kind, and above all, be humble.”
My Black Triangle
by Grace Nichols
image by Candice Fong
My black triangle
sandwiched between the geography of my thighs
Is a Bermuda
of tiny atoms
forever seizing
and releasing
the world
My black triangle
is so rich
that it flows over
on to the dry crotch
of the world
My black triangle
is black light
sitting on the threshold
of the world
Overlooking deep-pink
probabilities
and though
it spares a thought
for history
my black triangle
has spread beyond his story
beyond the dry fears of parch-ri-archy
spreading and growing
trusting and flowering
my black triangle
carries the seal of approval
of my deepest self
Britni Danielle
Washington Post Journalist
Language like that
[ex: mistress] elides the true nature of their relationship, which is believed to have begun when Hemings, then 14 years old, accompanied Jefferson’s daughter to live with Jefferson, then 44, in Paris. She wasn’t Jefferson’s mistress; she was his property. And he raped her.
On the use of “Slave Mistress”
First, what’s wrong with “slave mistress” as a moniker for women of color who had sexual liaisons with white men? As this group of feminist historians points out, quite a lot. As Judith Weisenfeld explains, the phrase performs an “erasure of sexual violence against black women.” These historians point to the tension within the apparent contradiction of “slave” beside “mistress,” that is, the collapsing of an enslaved existence with a word that implies agency and willingness. In other words, the use of “mistress” to describe women of color who performed sexual labor during slavery reiterates the fantasy of the slave holder who owned her in our own language, reproducing the mythology that women of color in sexual liaison with white men somehow transcended the experience of slavery.
-Owens
By Britni Danielle
Sally Hemings wasn’t Thomas Jefferson’s mistress. She was his property.
Romanticizing Hemings and Jefferson’s so-called relationship minimizes the deadly imbalance of power that black people suffered under before the Civil War. It also obscures our collective history as a nation that moved from being built on the blood, bones and backs of enslaved African Americans and indigenous people, to being the imperfect, hopeful and yet still unequal country we are today.
-Danielle
Reproductive Rights and the Long Hand of Slave Breeding
image by Bisa Butler
We don’t commonly recognize that American slaveholders supported closing the trans-Atlantic slave trade; that they did so to protect the domestic market, boosting their own nascent breeding operation. Women were the primary focus: their bodies, their “stock,” their reproductive capacity, their issue. Planters advertised for them in the same way as they did for breeding cows or mares, in farm magazines and catalogs. They shared tips with one another on how to get maximum value out of their breeders. They sold or lent enslaved men as studs and were known to lock teenage boys and girls together to mate in a kind of bullpen.
by June Soomer
image by Bisa Butler
The Manipulation of the Production and Reproduction of African Women in the Caribbean during Slavery
African women were expected to do sexual duties that were not limited to childbearing.
White men saw access to their female slaves as part of their right as
slave owners. She adds that, "the emphasis on the earthliness, sexuality and physical strength of black women initiated unfavorable comparisons between black and white women, especially on the moral plane." This stereotyping was not limited to the Caribbean. It would spread throughout plantation America and would ensure the continued devaluation of African women in the diaspora.
A tender spot in master-slave relations
By Lonnae O'Neal Parker
image by Bisa Butler
The land for Ohio's Wilberforce University, the nation's oldest private historically black college, where DuBois had once taught, at one time had been part of a resort - a place called Tawawa House, where wealthy Southern slaveholders would take their slave mistresses for open-air "vacations."
-O'Neal Parker
Monticello Is Done Avoiding Jefferson’s Relationship With Sally Hemings
image by Bisa Butler
The thorniest of all, in an era of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo is: How to describe the decades-long sexual relationship between Jefferson and Hemings? Should it be described as rape?
“We really can’t know what the dynamic was,” said Leslie Greene Bowman, president of the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. “Was it rape? Was there affection? We felt we had to present a range of views, including the most painful one.”
-Stockman
by Heather Millar
Photo credit: Author's family album. In an old black and white photo, two men are wearing hats, dark face coverings and white shoulder sashes. One man is putting a notice on the side of a barn, while the other man holds a gun.
The initial purpose of the Kentucky Night Riders wasn’t racial oppression but economic liberation. Yet, as seen time and again across American history, racial oppression is everywhere in their story. In addition to the price drops, large planters — all white — were upset that low tobacco prices pushed Black sharecroppers to leave the land because they couldn’t break even on their tobacco crops. Planters wanted the dependent, compliant labor force that sharecroppers could provide.
-Millar