Women and Children in Slavery

Every aspect of slave women's lives-from the clothes they wore, the food they ate, and even the people they married-was controlled by their owners. Even worse, slave-owners could, and often did, sexually abuse their female slaves. Children who resulted from these unions were automatically considered slaves and lived in abject conditions. But slave women and children endured their terrible circumstances, and often fought back in subtle ways against the unjust system of chattel slavery.