The Sexual Abuse of Black Men under American Slavery

According to Deborah Gray White, Those who tried to protect their spouses were themselves abused. In particular, it is indebted to Martha Hodes's research on antebellum sex between white women and enslaved black men, Thelma Jennings's work on the sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and Deborah Gray White's study of plantation life for enslaved women.12 Through their painstaking research in slave records, these and other scholars show that the sexual abuse of enslaved women was ubiquitous.\n Madison Jefferson, for example, who was himself a slave in Virginia, pointed out already in 1841 that "the proof of the rape of enslaved black women by white men was that "a very considerable portion of the slaves are of the mixed race.