They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

In Chapter 5, Jones-Rogers explores the role of enslaved women as wet nurses. She provides a personal example of an enslaved woman’s purchase. Facilitated by a white woman, this transaction occurs in the street, rather than a traditional slave market. Jones-Rogers introduces the central claim of this chapter, which will explore the ways in which white women “transformed the ability to suckle into a skilled form of labor, and created a largely invisible niche sector of the slave market that catered exclusively to white women” (102). Jones-Rogers provides an overview of the scholarship surrounding the commodification of nursing in this time period and discusses how historians have come to the consensus that white southern women in the upper and middle classes used enslaved wet nurses sparingly. Jones-Rogers criticizes the small sampling of documents used by historians to reach this conclusion. This small sample of documents focused only on elite, literate women rather than the white female majority in the South. Through the examination of a wider range of firsthand accounts, Jones-Rogers argues that relying on enslaved wet nurses was more widespread than historians previously claimed (103).

The practice of wet nursing was common. However, in the 19th century, fears emerged regarding “the power of bodily fluids and a child’s ability to imbibe moral and racial essences through a woman’s breast milk” (103). White southerners grappled with these fears, worrying about the fate of white children who nursed from women they considered biologically and morally inferior. Some chose to continue the practice out of necessity while others freed the enslaved women who nursed their children to shield themselves from the disgrace.

Jones-Rogers lists the various reasons why white women utilized enslaved women to nurse their infants. While some women struggled to nurse their own children and used wet nurses out of necessity, others chose to do so “for purely aesthetic reasons” and because of the amount of time nursing children themselves would take (105). Enslaved women suffered the immense physical demands placed on them. They were often forced to produce children of their own at the same time as their pregnant mistresses without access to adequate nourishment for themselves and their babies. Enslaved women were also often raped to conceive these children.

Jones-Rogers provides an overview of the wet nurse marketplaces in the United States and explores the differences between the Northern and Southern wet nurse marketplaces. Historians have mainly studied the wet nurse marketplaces in the North where white parents procured wet nurses through informal networks within their families and communities. Over time, the use of wet nurses became institutionalized in the North. Unlike their Northern counterparts, southern marketplaces “permitted slave owners, slave traders, and prospective hirers and buyers to manipulate and examine the bodies of enslaved women in ways that were unavailable to white parents in the North” (109). Through her analysis of specific examples and advertisements from the time period, Jones-Rogers makes the connection between the Southern wet nurse marketplace and the slave market clear.

Eventually, the hiring of enslaved wet nurses created a niche market within the broader slave trade. Male slave traders placed most of the advertisements selling enslaved wet nurses, although the advertisements themselves targeted women. Jones-Rogers forges a connection between the evaluation and grading of cotton and the evaluation and grading of breast milk. Jones-Rogers argues that, like cotton, breast milk was “a product of nature that enslaved people cultivated and produced and white southerners sold” (116).

Slave owners restricted enslaved women from spending time nursing their own children so they could be hired out more frequently as wet nurses. The separation of enslaved mothers from their children served as a selling point promoted in advertisements. Enslaved wet nurses “without encumbrance”—meaning without their own children—were preferred as prospective buyers to maximize their time and milk for white infants. Jones-Rogers defines these cruel acts as examples of maternal violence. According to Jones-Rogers, maternal violence is when “white mothers treated enslaved women’s bodies, their labor, and the products of their labor as goods, and in consequence were able to commit violence against these women, in their role as mothers” (120). Jones-Rogers questions why white mothers were so willing to engage in such acts of violence against enslaved mothers and their infants.

She addresses the dehumanization of enslaved people and how 18th century slavers claimed that women from West Africa lacked emotional attachments to their children. Jones-Rogers discusses how white southerners described enslaved women as “cheerful beings” incapable of feeling normal emotions of grief and sorrow (121). To increase their chances of being sold, enslaved people were told by slave traders and owners to pretend to be contented and hide their trauma. Despite their own normalized and public displays of grief, white women ignored the grief felt by enslaved mothers, all while committing acts of maternal violence and perpetuating the trauma they demand should be kept hidden.