An interactive exhibit

Violence, Gender and Control

How enslavers used violence shaped by gender in the American South before the Civil War.

Research question

How did enslavers use physical and sexual violence to establish and maintain gender-based power and control over enslaved men and women in the American South before the Civil War?

Thesis

Enslavers used physical and sexual violence to control enslaved people, and that violence was shaped by gender.

Content note This site discusses physical and sexual violence under slavery. It shows historical paintings, sculpture, a photograph and a document from the period, none of them graphic. You can move through it at your own pace and leave any room at any time.

Efrain Obazee
SOCSCI 1SS3 Engaging Literature, McMaster University
Dr. J. Gouweloos. Course theme: critical studies of crime and criminalization.

Painting of a woman in a white apron standing in the doorway of a small wooden building. — Winslow Homer, *Near Andersonville*, 1865–66. Newark Museum. Public domain.

The puzzle

One violence, or two?

Most accounts of slavery describe violence against enslaved people as one shared experience. My puzzle is why enslavers' violence took different forms for men and women, and what that difference reveals about how enslavers held power.

Painting of men, women and children gathered in a yard beside a worn house. — Eastman Johnson, *Negro Life at the South*, 1859. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Five rooms

Choose a room

Enter the rooms in any order. Each room presents claims from the literature, then my analysis. The conclusion opens after you have visited all five.

0 of 5 rooms visited

Painting of two women carrying sacks through a cotton field. — Winslow Homer, *The Cotton Pickers*, 1876. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Public domain.

Room 1 of 5

Forced reproduction

Open each card to read what the source shows.

According to Djelid (2024), enslavers forced enslaved men and women to reproduce.
Djelid (2024) writes that enslavers used "a spectrum of violence as a tool of coercion" (Djelid, 2024, p. 21).
As Djelid (2024) shows, enslavers selected people for desired traits and exploited their children.
Djelid (2024) also notes that some enslaved men were hired out or kept as "stock men."

My analysis

Djelid's evidence shows that sexual violence under slavery did not target women alone. Enslavers treated reproduction as a business decision and used violence to force it on men and women. Fausto-Sterling (2000/2018) explains Foucault's idea of bio-power, where those in power manage bodies and control births across a population. Forced reproduction was bio-power carried out with a whip.

Old photograph of a row of small houses behind a fence, under large trees. — Wilson & Havens, *Hermitage Slave Quarters, Savannah, Georgia*, c. 1867–1885. New York Public Library. Public domain.

Room 2 of 5

Mothers

Open each card to read what the source shows.

According to West and Shearer (2018), slaveholders exploited enslaved mothers as both workers and reproducers.
West and Shearer (2018) explain that law made the child of an enslaved woman enslaved.
West and Shearer (2018) note that some pregnancies resulted from sexual assault.
West and Shearer (2018) also show that motherhood was a source of pride and shared, communal care.
In the words of West and Shearer (2018), "motherhood could be a double-edged sword for women in bondage" (West & Shearer, 2018, p. 1008).

My analysis

West and Shearer show that enslavers expected women to work and bear children at the same time. Fausto-Sterling's table of dualisms helps explain how enslavers justified this. The table pairs master with slave, male with female, and production with reproduction (Fausto-Sterling, 2000/2018, p. 137). Enslaved women were placed on the lower side of every pair, so enslavers claimed both their labour and their bodies. Motherhood gave enslaved women pride and connection, but it was also the reason enslavers valued them.

Marble sculpture of a standing woman with her hands clasped, looking upward. — Edmonia Lewis, *Hagar*, 1875. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Photo by Mark Landon, CC BY 4.0.

Room 3 of 5

Men

Open each card to read what the source shows.

According to Doddington (2018), enslaved men "crafted a masculine identity through work" (Doddington, 2018, p. 288).
Doddington (2018) shows that expectations of enslaved men changed as they aged.
Doddington (2018) also finds that community support was not always offered.
According to Djelid (2024), enslavers also controlled men's sexual and reproductive lives.

My analysis

Doddington shows that enslaved men built identities through work even while enslavers controlled their lives. Djelid shows that this control reached into men's sexual and reproductive lives. Together, these sources show that slavery did not erase masculinity. Enslavers shaped and limited it, and it shifted as men aged. Fausto-Sterling (2000/2018) argues that labelling someone a man or a woman is a social decision. Under slavery, enslavers made many of those decisions for the people they owned.

Painting of a man seated in a dark room, reading a book. — Eastman Johnson, *The Lord Is My Shepherd*, c. 1863. Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public domain.

Room 4 of 5

Resistance

Open each card to read what the source shows.

According to Shearer (2025), enslaved women turned everyday objects into weapons against overseers.
Shearer (2025) finds that their violence sometimes went beyond self-defense into retribution.
Shearer (2025) states that "Black female-perpetrated violence was not solely defensive" (Shearer, 2025, p. 264).
Shearer (2025) draws on judicial records, fugitive narratives and testimony of the formerly enslaved.

My analysis

Shearer's research challenges the idea that enslaved women were only victims of violence. They used everyday objects as weapons, and some struck back for past abuse. This breaks the dualism of the active master and the passive slave. It also complicates my thesis in a useful way. Enslavers used violence to control enslaved people, but that control was never complete.

Painting of a man, a woman and a child riding one horse at speed. — Eastman Johnson, *A Ride for Liberty: The Fugitive Slaves*, c. 1862. Brooklyn Museum. Public domain.

Room 5 of 5

Law and crime

Open each card to read what the source shows.

According to West and Shearer (2018), law made the child of an enslaved woman enslaved, which gave enslavers a financial reason to control reproduction.
Shearer (2025) shows that enslaved women's violent resistance appears in judicial records.
According to Fausto-Sterling (2000/2018, p. 136), Foucault gave "discipline" a double meaning, both control or punishment and an academic body of knowledge.

My analysis

This room connects my research to crime and criminalization. Slavery used discipline in both of Foucault's senses (Fausto-Sterling, 2000/2018). The law turned enslaved women's children into property (West & Shearer, 2018). The everyday violence enslavers used was part of how the system ran. When enslaved women used violence, it appeared in judicial records (Shearer, 2025). This difference shows how law decided whose violence counted as a problem.

Painting of men, women and children seated around a stove in a room, while white men stand at the back. — Eyre Crowe, *Slaves Waiting for Sale, Richmond, Virginia*, 1861. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Conclusion

What the difference reveals

Enslavers used physical and sexual violence to control enslaved people, and that violence was shaped by gender.

Enslavers did not use one kind of violence on one kind of body. They matched their violence to gender, because gender told them what they could take: labour, children, or both. Fausto-Sterling argues that 'ideas of both race and gender emerge from wider-lying assumptions' about the body (2000/2018, p. 136). Slavery shows how violent those assumptions could become. The resistance of enslaved people shows the limits of that power.

Detail of a marble sculpture of a kneeling woman with clasped hands, with a standing figure's hand on her shoulder. — Edmonia Lewis, *Forever Free* (detail), 1867. Howard University. Photo by Mark Landon, CC BY 4.0.

Sources

References

Djelid, A. (2024). "The master whished to reproduce": Slavery, forced intimacy, and enslavers' interference in sexual relationships in the antebellum South, 1808–1861. American Nineteenth Century History, 25(1), 21–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2024.2317499
Doddington, D. (2018). "Old fellows": Age, identity, and solidarity in slave communities of the antebellum South. Journal of Global Slavery, 3(3), 286–312. https://doi.org/10.1163/2405836X-00303005
Fausto-Sterling, A. (2018). Dueling dualisms. In M. Hobbs & C. Rice (Eds.), Gender and women's studies: Critical terrain (2nd ed., pp. 132–143). Women's Press. (Original work published 2000)
Shearer, E. (2025). Challenging the overseer: Enslaved women's violent resistance in the US antebellum South. American Nineteenth Century History, 26(3), 249–269. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664658.2025.2548983
West, E., & Shearer, E. (2018). Fertility control, shared nurturing, and dual exploitation: The lives of enslaved mothers in the antebellum United States. Women's History Review, 27(6), 1006–1020. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2017.1336849

Image credits

Crowe, E. (1861). Slaves waiting for sale, Richmond, Virginia [Painting]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Crowe-Slaves_Waiting_for_Sale_-_Richmond,_Virginia.jpg
Homer, W. (1865–1866). Near Andersonville [Painting]. Newark Museum, Newark, NJ, United States. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_-_Near_Andersonville_(1866).jpg
Homer, W. (1876). The cotton pickers [Painting]. Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, United States. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Winslow_Homer_-_The_Cotton_Pickers_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Johnson, E. (1859). Negro life at the South [Painting]. Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastman_Johnson_-_Negro_Life_at_the_South_-_ejb_-_fig_67_-_pg_120.jpg
Johnson, E. (ca. 1862). A ride for liberty: The fugitive slaves [Painting]. Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, NY, United States. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastman_Johnson_-_A_Ride_for_Liberty_--_The_Fugitive_Slaves_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Johnson, E. (ca. 1863). The Lord is my shepherd [Painting]. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, United States. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastman_Johnson_-_The_Lord_Is_My_Shepherd_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg
Lewis, E. (1867). Forever free [Sculpture]. Howard University, Washington, DC, United States. Photograph by M. Landon, licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Forever_Free,_by_Edmonia_Lewis_(Howard_Univ_67.9.S)_10.jpg
Lewis, E. (1875). Hagar [Sculpture]. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, United States. Photograph by M. Landon, licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hagar,_by_Edmonia_Lewis_(SAAM_1983.95.178)_02.jpg
U.S. Government. (1865). Proclamation of the Secretary of State regarding the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment [Document]. National Archives at Washington, DC, United States. https://catalog.archives.gov/id/6247985
Wilson & Havens. (ca. 1867–1885). Hermitage slave quarters, Savannah, Georgia [Photograph]. New York Public Library. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hermitage_Slave_Quarters_(Savannah,_Georgia).jpg

Original creative piece by Efrain Obazee. SOCSCI 1SS3 Engaging Literature, McMaster University.

Handwritten first page of the 1865 proclamation, headed with the name of Secretary of State William H. Seward. — Proclamation of the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment, 1865. National Archives at Washington, DC. Public domain.