The Battleground of Black Women’s Bodies

The lasting impact and brutal legacy of slavery in the United States is everywhere. From buildings and monuments of our nation’s capitol built by enslaved people, to economic development through exploitation of Black communities, to laws and systems created to enforce divisions.

The United States touts itself as a place for second chances and prosperity, but, in reality, was created through a legacy of pain, degradation, and abject horror for millions of people. Black women, and their bodies, hold a unique place in this story.

Slavery claimed physical autonomy. And for enslaved Black women, that meant their bodies were exploited for economic gain, physical labor, child birth, and medical trials, in a system where consent and autonomy were both non-existent.

This is part of the true foundation of the U.S.

In The Price for Their Pound of Flesh, Diana Ramey Berry documents how enslaved people were assigned monetary value from the moment they were born to their deaths. And enslaved Black women held a different type of value because their bodies were able to reproduce the ‘workforce’. In essence, Black women’s bodies were used both to sustain the system of slavery through their labor and perpetuate the system that enslaved them through childbirth.

And this was codified into law.