Smothered Slave Infants

Were Slave Mothers at Fault

Bibliographic Data

ID10242436
AuthorsMichael P Johnson (0000-0002-5675-8019), Michael Johnson (0009-0006-4780-3136, corresponding author)
Year1981
Volume47
Issue4
Pages493
Publication date1981-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Southern History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-4642 • E-ISSN: 2325-6893
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2207400
PMID11632401
OpenAlexW2466464434
LanguageEN
Citations received9

IN THE SOUTH CAROLINA UPCOUNTRY DISTRICT OF ABBEVILLE IN 1850 a one-month-old slave girl named Harriet reported to the census marshal Charles M. Pelot as having died in December 1849 because she Smothered by carelessness of [her] mother. Similar reports are scattered throughout the mortality schedules of the United States census for the southern states. Allice Burrow, a six-month-old slave girl in Henrico County, Virginia, was Smouthered by her Mother Lying on her while asleep; in Tippah County, Mississippi, the two-month-old slave girl Biddy Accidentally overlaid by [her] mother in her Sleep; in Cobb County, Georgia, an eight-month-old slave boy Overlaid by [his] Mother; in Spartanburg District, South Carolina, a five-monthold slave girl said to have been Overlaid by [her] mother and smothered. 1 The grim record goes on and on. In 1860 the slave states accounted for 94 percent of the nation's 2,129 reported deaths by suffocation. Most of these victims were probably the children of slaves, the published mortality census

Art · Fault (geology · Seismology · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Geology · History · Homelessness and Social Issues · Race, History, and American Society

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