Lau, Cheuk Hak
AFAS 342-03
2013/11/30
How is history ever present in black women’s lives?
'When I reflect on Black women and images, the first thing that enters my mind is the portrayal of them through media images as self-hating, angry, miserable, and vindictive. All of those characterizations are fictitious and derive from Western America’s foundation of White supremacy, as the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan has so clearly demonstrated and proven.'
—Dr. Ava Muhammad, attorney and Nation of Islam student minister The lives of black women in the early centuries were always tough. They were frequently the victims of sexual abuse and domestic violence.
After Columbus first discovered America, Queen Isabella of Spain saw an opportunity to make a huge profit by sea trading. Her men bought black people in Africa, and sailed to America. People in America bought black people and put them all into farms, mines, and other places to do hard work. This was called triangular trade, and this is how black people first got into America. Whites treated black people like animals; they gave them the worst food, minimal breaks, and the worst dwellings. Black people had absolutely no rights back then. They were property of their owners.
Most of the black women became slave girls. After they were bought by their masters, they became the easiest target for sexual harassment from their white masters. Almost every black woman had been sexual violated. For example, we have read a novel called “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.” Harriet Jacobs uses the pseudonym Linda Brent to narrate her first person account. She was born into slavery, where her master is cruel and neglectful. She recounts, “When he told me that I was made for his use, made to obey his command in everything; that I was nothing but a slave, whose will must and should surrender to his, never before had my