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The Black Breastfeeding Blog was created by Jennifer James as a way to reach black mothers who are currently breastfeeding or who want to breastfeed in the future. As a former breastfeeding mother of two daughters (who she breastfed for two years each), Jennifer believes in the powerful healing properties of breast milk and believes all black moms should at least start the nursing process to increase the health of their babies.


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Breastfeeding in 1857: The Life of a Suckler (Breastfeeding Slave)
Sunday, June 3, 2007

If today was June 3, 1857 and I was a breastfeeding slave on James Henry Hammonds' plantation I would be afforded only a few rights, more, though, than if I was a childless slave woman or a slave mother who had ceased lactating.

According to Hammonds' Plantation Manual (pictured above) I would be allowed to:
  1. stay in the slave quarters every day until sunrise (instead of leaving for the fields at o-dark-thirty like the rest of the slaves)
  2. suckle for only 12 months (certainly no more)
  3. work in a field only 1/2 mile from the children's house
  4. suckle for 45 minutes at a time, three times a day until eight months, twice a day when nearing 12 months (we know that's just not enough!)
  5. only do 3/5 the work of a full-hand
But upon weaning at one year, on Hammonds' orders, my child would be taken entirely away from me for two whole weeks and given to a childless woman to raise. I would be forbidden to nurse my baby after that point.

Hammond, James H. Papers of James Henry Hammond: Plantation Manual, 1857-1858. American women : a Library of Congress guide for the study of women's history and culture in the United States / edited by Sheridan Harvey ... [et al.]. Washington : Library of Congress, 2001, p. 152.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?ammem/AMALL:@field%28DOCID+@lit%282002719341%29%29

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posted by Jennifer James @ 5:49 PM,

5 Comments:

At June 5, 2007 8:32 AM, Blogger Rachel's Tavern said...

That is a piece of history I didn't know.

You know many enslaved women were also used as wet nurses, but I wasn't really sure about slave mothers and the feeding of their own children. Three times a day for a small baby--I bet the infants were malenourished.

 
At June 5, 2007 10:11 AM, Blogger Jennifer James said...

This is amazing stuff, isn't it? I knew about wet nurses and I had also read that there were a few women on the plantation who nursed all the babies. But it's a big discovery for me as well that some slave women actually nursed their own babies.

 
At June 7, 2007 10:21 AM, Blogger Rachel's Tavern said...

But I don't really know when formula was invented. So was their any other real option?

 
At June 8, 2007 7:37 AM, Blogger Jennifer James said...

I don't think formula had been created then, although I can't say that for sure. All of my life I thought/assumed slave babies were fed by slave wet nurses while their mothers worked the fields or worked elsewhere on the plantation. It's amazing to find out that some mothers were actually allowed to nurse their own.

 
At June 12, 2007 8:27 PM, Blogger Rachel's Tavern said...

LOL!! I said "male" nourished. I didn't catch that.

I doubt they were male nourished.

Let's try malnourished.

 

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