The fertility of enslaved women was examined by owners to make sure they were able to birth as many children as possible. Secretly, slaveowners would impregnate enslaved women and when the child was born and grew to an age where he could work on the fields, they would take the “very same children (of their) own blood and make slaves out of them,” as pointed out in the National Humanities Center Resource Toolbox on Slaveholders’ Sexual Abuse of Slaves.
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