Edward Ball chronicles his family's slave-owning history in the compelling historical narrative Slaves in the Family. Ball traces the lineages of his white relatives and their slaves and where possible recreates life as it was on the Ball plantations in South Carolina. Descendents of the Englishman Elias Ball bought and sold enough slaves to populate a city. By no means singular in their treatment of the Africans, the Balls prove nevertheless to be a prime example of a Southern plantation dependent on the blood, sweat, and tears of families and individuals ripped from their homeland and bought and sold as commodity. Cruelty was meted out equally among black males and females, but it is worthwhile to contrast the unique experiences of enslaved women on the Southern plantations. If nothing else, motherhood and childrearing set the women apart. They watched their newborns emerge into a world of shackles, often completely losing them to the slave traders. Black men and women were flogged, whipped, beaten, punished like animals. All slaves were the physical property of their white owners, who bought, sold, and traded them like livestock. At the markets they were exhibited alongside cattle and goats, on display. When sold or traded, the owners often failed to report whether or not the slave was male or female (Ball, p. 99). Because they were inhuman, the distinction of gender mattered not to the slave trader. Both women and men were employed as field workers and domestics. Both the men and women "cleared acres among the tupelo gum trees," to grow the Ball's key crop: rice (Ball, p. 103). However, the specific duties carried out by males and females differed: men were delegated tasks of hard labor like ditch digging for plantation irrigation. Women seeded the ground with rice, in the tradition of their African forebears. Enslaved women often worked as domestic attendants, "minding babies," and performing household...
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