Period 5 1/30/15
APUSH - A History of Women in America Quiz – Ch. 4, 6, & 7
1) Black slaves, in general, resisted their enslavement by not acknowledging their status as property, not acknowledging the white person stereotype, and by cherishing their traditional family origins, as well as by covert and overt sabotage.
2) The region in which they worked, the skills they possessed, and the white person who owned them, are all factors that affected the quality of a slave’s life.
3) Urban slaves were usually hired year round as skilled or unskilled laborers. They had much more freedom of contact and movement and were frequently friendly and in contact with the large population of free slaves in the South, who occasionally taught these urban slaves to read and write. Urban women slaves usually worked as maids, nannies, and other positions around the owner’s house. Usually owners of urban slaves were protective over their slaves and would even intervene if necessary when a slave of theirs would be treated badly by a neighbor. While plantation slaves, although much is not recorded concerning them, were treated as property and livestock. Slaves in the Old South, places such as Virginia, North and South Carolina, and the coast of Georgia were treated in a much less harsh manner when in comparison to slaves in the Deep South.
4) Slave women were asked to do “women’s work” in slave quarters, work just as men in the field, and reproduce. During the winter months, slave women would spend their days weaving, knitting, candle making, and basket and mat weaving. They were also expected to cook, clean, and care for their own families.
5) White owners supported slave marriage because due to the expectancy of a family to stay together, it decreased the risk of them attempting to escape. Slave owners also believed it balanced out their system of slaves.
6) It could be said that all sexual contact between black women and white men in the South was a form of rape because black women did not have the right of refusal.
7) Blacks resisted by slowing down when they felt they were being forced to work at an inadequate pace, they would “accidentally” destroy and set fire to property, cattle, wood, or anything that belonged to their owners. Individual slaves would escape and, through an intermediary, negotiate their return with the property owner, often times proposing that a less harsh overseer be hired. Women slaves feigned pregnancies and all slaves feigned illnesses and disabilities.
8) Mary Wollstonecraft was the first woman to discuss woman’s place in society in political terms,