Description

My son will not be a slave; Giclee Canvas print Size; 26″ x 16.5.  Custom size making are available, please contact us

Slaves were aware that their masters needed and relied on their childbearing abilities to boost the slave population. Bearing this in mind, enslaved women resisted performing this duty. They resorted to all forms of tactics from avoiding having sex to ending their pregnancies. Young mothers knew they would eventually be separated from their children. If they had daughters, the mothers realized that sexual assault would be their lot in life just as it had been in theirs.

They worked to avoid this horrible fate for their daughters by actively seeking to protect their children from the nightmare of slavery. Often, they did what they felt compelled to. The mothers would take action by killing their newborn infants to keep them from being raised into slavery. Such was the textbook case of Margaret Garner, a mother who killed her own daughter when she was discovered seeking to escape slavery with her children. Garner’s story inspired Toni Morrison’s 1988 novel Beloved and a film of the same name as well as several theatrical plays and productions.