“Three Sides to a Story: Slave Breeding, the Academy and Black Collective Memory in the United States”

Written By: Selena Sanderfer Doss

Western Kentucky University 

Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History. By Gregory D. Smithers. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2012. 257 pages. $22.95 (paper)

“Three Sides to a Story: Slave Breeding, the Academy and Black Collective Memory in the United States”

Determining if slave breeding actually occurred or if it is merely a myth has been for the academy one of the most controversial topics in the study of American slavery. Sources such as slave narratives, oral histories, and abolitionist materials were assumed to be unreliable, and plantation financial records documenting the practice have yet to be located. While professionally trained historians are generally incredulous that slave breeding existed, black American collective memory continues to testify to its truth. The adage that “There are three sides to every story, yours, mine and the truth” is representative of the rift between the academy and black collective memory over the existence or absence of slave breeding, however, the truth is that it probably lies somewhere in between. 

In the academy, much of the resistance to the existence of systematic slave breeding stems from arguments made by historians Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman. In their classic, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery, slave breeding is operationally defined as the “1) interference in the normal sexual habits of slaves to maximize female fertility through such devices as mating women with especially potent men, in much the same was as exists in breeding of livestock; 2) the raising of slaves with the sale as the main objective, in much the same ways as cattle or horses raised.” The authors then note the absence of collaborative source materials but do suggest that positive economic incentives such as better housing, small plots of land for private cultivation, and lighter workloads account for demographic variation in birth rates and sex ratios. Works by amateur historians and scholars outside of the history discipline challenging Fogel and Engerman have received some popular attention, but have not been widely accepted within the field. Some professional historians, however, have rejected such a narrow interpretation and allude to the exponential growth of the enslaved population in the Upper South and an extensive internal slave trade in which slave traders sold thousands of bonds people to western and Deep South states. In addition, an increasing number of historians have also begun to grapple with the idea of the compelled mating of enslaved people. Nevertheless, the discourse offers no consensus about the definition of slave breeding. 

Gregory D. Smithers addresses this discrepancy by recounting how slave breeding has been remembered in his work, Slave Breeding; Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History. From the book’s inception, Smithers was discouraged from pursuing the topic by senior faculty, who taught “that slave breeding was not “real,” that the sources used to claim it was “de truf—the writings of nineteenth-century abolitionists memoirs by former slaves, and oral histories—are so skewed and biased that there is no possibility that such practices ever “actually happened.” (4) Pursing this topic was a brave undertaking, to say the least. As a professional historian, he risked the possibility of being ostracized and labeled a sensationalist by his colleagues.

In some ways, Slave Breeding, avoids the discursive trappings over the creditability of slave breeding by revising the question. While Smithers’ works counters the dearth of literature on the subject, he does not directly confirm or dispute its authenticity. Instead, he focuses on how the idea that slave breeding was widely practiced was promulgated in the antebellum period and how it was remembered after slavery’s end. He contends that “As a whole, the chapters in this book problematize white America’s hegemonic hold over the retelling of American history and of slavery’s place in that history. Through different intellectual and cultural genres, we will see how African American memories of slave breeding expose the tension between “vernacular” interpretations of the past and professional historical narratives.”(19) He also borrows from Herbert Gutman in expanding the definition of slave breeding to include, “any practice of the slave master intended to cause the fertility of the slave population to be higher than it would have been in the absence of such interference.”(10) By doing so, Smithers rejects the mythologized view of slave breeding, where enslaved men and women were forced to couple with different partners, children were housed away from parents while being reared for market, and owners found their primary wealth in the routine selling of slaves. Instead, he broadens the idea of what constitutes slave breeding to include topics such as rape, familial separation, the internal slave trade, slave marriages, rewards, punishments, pregnancy and childcare. 

Slave Breeding is arranged chronologically covering a period of more than 150 years. Each chapter also expounds upon a particular theme such as the abolitionist movement, the Lost Cause ideology, racial violence during the Jim Crow Era, the modern Civil Rights Movement, and popular twentieth century media. A large portion of each chapter focuses on the historiography of each topic with Smithers vigorously interrogating secondary sources. Short-hand footnotes may present a slight inconvenience for researchers, but are navigable when used in conjunction with the bibliography. Smithers examines abolitionists’ speeches, fugitive slave narratives, oral histories, the memoirs of civil rights activists, and popular fiction and film to recount how black Americans remember slave breeding. Still, it may have been helpful to attempt to peruse some traditional plantation sources and summarize any research frustrations or successes. For instance, could surveying the records of slave trading houses yield any evidence? Do certain owners appear to repeatedly sell slaves on an annual basis? Do slave advertisements specifically reference breeders for sale? Was this term meant for any female slave of child bearing age or a direct call that she has been or could be used for breeding children for the slave market? These questions deserve further exploration, however, perhaps they lie beyond Smithers’ purpose in writing the book.

Smithers begins his work with the abolition movement in the 1830s and makes a compelling argument about the role that slave breeding played in promoting antislavery in the US. He identifies two crucial periods where slave breeding is referenced, after the abolition of the slave trade in 1807 and the period of territorial expansion in the 1840s and 1850s. Smithers writes with a certain ambiguity when discussing these sources. At times, he characterizes black and white abolitionists’ use of slave breeding as “sensational and sentimental rhetoric,” which to some could imply dubiety as he does not offer commentary on whether these claims were true, exaggerated, or false. (20) He continues to analyze the views of former abolitionists and former slave owners in the following chapter, “Slavery, the Lost Cause, and American History.” Smithers identifies slave breeding and the assumed immorality of blacks as inspiring the efforts of ex-Confederates to rationalize the restoration of white supremacy. Comparably, the reminiscences among former white and black abolitionists emphasized the emotional toil that separating parents, children, and siblings caused and the connection between American economic growth and the sexual exploitation of enslaved Americans.

The differing opinions between white and black historians during the Jim Crow era over slave breeding is chronicled in chapter three. In the early twentieth century, academic debates over the paternalistic nature of American slavery, its degenerative effect on black culture, the nationalist causes of the Civil War, and the harmful impact of Reconstruction ensued, in part, because black historians contested these claims often put forward by white historians in the academy. Ulrich B. Phillips, a historian in the Dunning School, portrayed American slavery as a benign institution with slave breeding having little significance, while his contemporary Claude G. Bowers attributed the rise of black population and mulattos to black female promiscuity. Black historians such as Carter G. Woodson, W. E. B. Du Bois, and E. Franklin Frazier generally regarded slave breeding as true and augmented abolitionists’ and amateur historians’ sensationalized views with empirical data to present concrete evidence of its occurrence. Du Bois’ and Woodson’s analysis of slave breeding in border states along with Frazier’s depiction of a pathological black family formed in part by the exploitation of black women during slavery all served to legitimize slave breeding in black collective memory and counter academic studies grounded in racist dogma. 

Chapters four and seven, “The Theatre of Memory,” and “Slave Breeding in the New Media,” evaluate slave breeding in popular literature, theatre and film in the twentieth century. Black playwrights such as Mary P. Burrill and Randolph Edmonds sought to refute portrayals of contented slaves and enraged black men with stories depicting suicide on southern plantations and the lynching of black men. These stories recognized the exploitation of enslaved women for breeding and the emasculating effects of racism on black men unable to protect them. The novels Foxes and Harrow (1947), and Mandingo (1957), which was later adapted for film release in 1975 reveal the staying power of ideas about black sexual exploitation and slave breeding.  Likewise, the 1971 movie Addio Zio Tom or Goodbye Uncle Tom with its grotesque scenes of enslaved children being reared in conditions more fit for livestock shocked American sensibilities, which had previously been exposed to more sanitized and racist views of slavery through films such as Gone with the Wind (1940) and Birth of a Nation (1915). 

The crux of the book is chapter five, which surveys the Works Progress Administration (WPA) oral slave narratives collected in the 1930s. Smithers makes a convincing argument that for slaves in the 1930s detailing instances of sexual exploitation, “there existed a defiant insistence that the narratives they presented were “de facts.” The historical and cultural values of former slaves’ recounting of this darker history has less to do with the historical profession’s noble, if misguided, quest for the “facts” about the past and more to do with the didactic nature of the history that former slaves narrated.” (102-103) Ex-slave accounts generally spoke of how whites selected fecund men and women to breed and the grief caused by selling family members. The commodification of slave sexuality and resulting dehumanization are seared into readers’ minds by first hand testimonies and the emotional retelling of sexual coercion, lost family members, and personal despair. 

The book ends with a comparison of black activists in the Modern Civil Rights Movement and their use of slave breeding rhetoric in forming arguments against segregation. Allusions to slave breeding by Baynard Rustin, Martin Luther King Jr., and Septima Clark demonstrate the sustainability that it has on black Americans perspectives on the history of racism and causes for inequality. Black leaders, like black historians, rooted contemporary problems in black communities in the degradation suffered by blacks during slavery. 

Slave Breeding is a commentary on how whites and blacks remembered slavery differently and how race permeates experiences and memories. How former slaves remembered their sexual exploitation and their separation from family members, reveal the depth of human trauma they experienced and the immense apathy towards whites for their role. For whites, who denied its existence, forced sale and separation families, could have been regarded as a rarity and only proposed as a matter of economic necessity. For enslaved peoples, however, the original intention of “ole master” to sell and enslaved child for greater profit or financial necessity was irrelevant when judging their character. Smithers asserts, “While the sale and separation of enslaved family members was not necessarily part of “breeding” schemes, that former slaves used the rhetoric highlights how intensely they felt about these issues.” (110)  For the enslaved, such a violent, insensitive, and unethical act of separating families could have only been committed by persons of immeasurably depravity driven by profit. Likewise, perceived acts of kindness such as the tolerance of slave marriages, where masters may have considered themselves kind and accommodating to their enslaved workers, were recalled cynically by slaves who rejected ideas of “benevolent paternalism” for those that recognized “slave family formation as part of a scheme to increase the slave population and enhance the profits of slave owners and the dreaded slave trader.” (112) 

If readers are looking for a definitive answer over the existence of slave breeding, it won’t be found here. Instead, they can find is a sympathetic view of black collective memory and the extreme trauma caused by slavery. The question of whether slave breeding did or did not happen is of secondary importance in this study. Smithers shows that what is important is the effect that such beliefs had on blacks. It has informed their view of exploitation during slavery, the need for civil justice and the desire to distinguish themselves morally from whites. To this day, beliefs regarding slavery’s legacy and how it continues to affect American society vary significantly. So too, does the question of slave breeding. Professionally trained historians and the general public would both be wise to accept that there are three parts to every story and the truth about the reality of slave breeding probably lies somewhere in between. 

1- Robert William Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Slavery, Revised edition, (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1995): 78-86. 

2 - Ned and Constance Sublette, The American Slave Coast: A History of the Slave-Breeding Industry (Chicago: Lawrence Hill Books, 2016); Gerald S. Nordé, White Slave Owners Breeding and Selectively Breeding Themselves with Their Black Female Slaves and Girls. (Lewiston, NY : Edwin Mellen Press, 2014)

3 -  Edward Baptist, The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism, (New York: Basic Books, 2014); Kenneth Stamp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-Bellum South. (New York: Vintage Books, 1956).

4 -  David Stefan Doddington, Contesting Slave Masculinity in the American South (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2018); Jennifer L Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery, (Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Marie Jenkins Schwartz, Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South (Cambridge, Mass; London : Harvard University Press, 2009)

5 -  Herbert Gutman and Richard Sutch, “Victorians All! The Sexual Mores and conduct of Slaves and Their Masters,” in Paul David, Herbert Gutman, Richard Sutch, et al, ed., Reckoning with Slavery: A Critical Study in the Quantitative History of American Negro Slavery (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 154.