The Rape of Black Males During Slavery
Topic: History
One of the main elements slavery provided to slave owners was sexual fulfillment. Not only did the White plantation owner have his wife to provide pleasure, but he also had the pick of his female slave population. This relationship of rape and sexual domination is depicted visually and very vividly in series and movies like Roots and 12 Years A Slave. But what is never mentioned is the rape experience of Black males during slavery.
Gay slave owners would often buy Black males according to physique and penis size. Just like straight slave masters, they bought what they were attracted to when purchasing for sexual pleasure. There was also the practice known as "Buck Breaking" or "Breaking The Buck." A spirited Black male slave was selected by the "massa," then beaten and subdued. Battered and restrained, he'd have his trousers removed and -- in front of his family and fellow slaves -- would be raped by the slave master. Friends of the slave master were also invited to take part. This act of debauchery acted as both a vehicle for the slave owner's sexual gratification, and a warning to other Black men and boys to submit.
Black male slaves were also sexually abused by White women in the position to do so. These were women of status such as female slave owners, wives of slave masters, and the female relatives of plantation owners. For those thinking that this might be enjoyable, or that it's impossible for a man to be raped by a woman -- think again! Imagine being forced to perform sex acts with or for the most unattractive woman you can visualize, with a gun at your head and the real possibility of the trigger being pulled if she wasn't satisfied! Imagine a slave owner's teen daughter forcing you to be her seuxal practice dummy, knowing the whole time that if/when you're discovered you'll be lynched or boiled in oil! Imagine having to have sex with an animal for the enjoyment of the slave master's wife and her friends! According to Captain Richard J. Hinton, an abolitionist commander in the
Civil War, “I have never found a bright-looking colored man, whose confidences I have won… who has not told me of instances where he has been compelled, either by his mistress, or by white women of the same class, to have connection with them.” One former slave told Hinton that his mistress ordered him to sleep with her after her husband died. These are just two examples of the many stories abolitionists like Hinton told to prove the immorality of slaveholding.
In Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1867), it mentions how planters’ daughters would take advantage of male slaves:
They know that the women slaves are subject to their father's authority in all things; and in some cases they exercise the same authority over the men slaves. I have myself seen the master of such a household whose head was bowed down in shame; for it was known in the neighborhood that his daughter had selected one of the meanest slaves on his plantation to be the father of his first grandchild. She did not make her advances to her equals, nor even to her father's more intelligent servants. She selected the most brutalized, over whom her authority could be exercised with less fear of exposure.
Africans who came to the Americas in bondage suffered in many ways. One of the most dehumanizing and nefarious aspects was that of sexual abuse. Black adults and children -- male and female -- experienced every kind of sexual degradation imaginable during this period in time when White skin equated to a free pass for sexual domination.
See:
Sex Farms During Slavery & The Effeminazation of Black Men
Slavery and Its Effect On Jamaican Homophobia
Sexual Relations Between Elite White Women and Enslaved Men in The Antebellum South
To Stay Updated FOLLOW The Whitehurst Blog. VISIT THIS LINK then CLICK THE FOLLOW BUTTON
