Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History

In this bold and provocative book, historian Gregory Smithers investigates how African Americans have narrated, remembered, and represented slave-breeding practices. He argues that while social and economic historians have downplayed the significance of slave breeding, African Americans have never been able to forget the trauma of violence and sexual coercion associated with the plantation South.

By placing African American histories and memories of slave breeding within the larger context of America’s history of racial and gender discrimination, Smithers reveals how sexual exploitation was both experienced and remembered by African Americans to inform how black Americans understand the political, social, and cultural nature of life in the United States.

This fascinating, provocative work sheds much-needed light on African American cultural memories, the perceptions of fragile black families, and the long history of racially motivated violence against men, women, and children of color.