There are two myths that shroud and define the Antebellum South. There is the myth born from “Gone with the Wind” of a South consisting only of vast plantations that churned out cash crops like cotton, tobacco, rice, and sugar cane. This was to the satisfaction of wealthy plantation owners who spent their days sipping tea under Oak trees draped in Spanish moss. Lavish, Greek-style plantation homes housed these affluent white, Christian families that consisted of gentrified men and beautiful, poised, women in hoop-skirts and gowns. Meanwhile the goods pouring out of the region were produced by the labor of complacent, and often invisible, slaves. The culmination of these simplistic, picturesque visions and misconceptions is the belief that slaves
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“These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend” (Jacobs 11). At auctions and buying house they were stripped and examined by potential buyers. Their bodies were scrutinized and seen as objects to serve only two purposes, labor and sex. Masters wanted strong, healthy, young workers that they could easily extort and get maximum work out of, but also use for breeding. Women especially were under scrutiny for, “women are considered of no value unless they continually increase their owner’s stock. They are put on par with animals” (Jacobs 44). Female slaves were often subjected to sexual harassment and rape at the hands of their masters who sought to rid them of their autonomy and deny them control of their bodies. In his speech “The Making of a Slave” Willie Lynch discusses the process of breeding slaves by comparing them to horses, “breed the mare and the stud until you have the desired offspring” (Lynch 3). The results of breeding slaves like live stock is the remaining over sexualization of African Americans in the stereotype of the well-endowed black man and promiscuous black woman. In fact, we find the slave roots of many black stereotypes in Lynch’s
“These God-breathing machines are no more, in the sight of their masters, than the cotton they plant, or the horses they tend” (Jacobs 11). At auctions and buying house they were stripped and examined by potential buyers. Their bodies were scrutinized and seen as objects to serve only two purposes, labor and sex. Masters wanted strong, healthy, young workers that they could easily extort and get maximum work out of, but also use for breeding. Women especially were under scrutiny for, “women are considered of no value unless they continually increase their owner’s stock. They are put on par with animals” (Jacobs 44). Female slaves were often subjected to sexual harassment and rape at the hands of their masters who sought to rid them of their autonomy and deny them control of their bodies. In his speech “The Making of a Slave” Willie Lynch discusses the process of breeding slaves by comparing them to horses, “breed the mare and the stud until you have the desired offspring” (Lynch 3). The results of breeding slaves like live stock is the remaining over sexualization of African Americans in the stereotype of the well-endowed black man and promiscuous black woman. In fact, we find the slave roots of many black stereotypes in Lynch’s