Children of the plantation facts for kids

A rare instance of a mulatto baby portrayed next to the baby's darker mother. John Brown, about to be executed, kisses the baby. Louis Ransom, 1863, reproduced as a Currier & Ives print.

"Children of the plantation" is a euphemism used that refers to ancestry tracing back to the time of slavery in the United States in which the offspring was born to black African female slaves (either still in the state of slavery or freed) in the context of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and European men, usually the slave's owner, one of the owner's relatives, or the plantation overseer. These children were often considered to be the property of the slave owner and were often subjected to the same treatment as other slaves on the plantation. Many of these children were born into slavery and had no legal rights, as they were not recognized as the legitimate children of their fathers. This practice was a form of abuse and exploitation, as the European men who fathered these children often used their power and authority to dominantly force themselves upon the black women who were under their control. The trauma and suffering that these children and their mothers experienced as a result of this practice continue to have a lasting impact on the African American community.

The children of plantation owners and female slaves were born into slavery, through a legal doctrine known as partus sequitur ventrem. They were classified as mulattoes, a former term for a multiracial person. The one drop rule meant that they could never be part of white society. Some of the fathers treated these children well, sometimes providing educational or career opportunities, or manumitting (freeing) them. Examples are Archibald and Francis Grimké, and Thomas Jefferson's children by Sally Hemings. Others treated their multiracial children as property; Alexander Scott Withers, for instance, sold two of his children to slave traders, where they were sold again.

Alex Haley's Queen: The Story of an American Family (1993) is a historical novel, later a movie, that brought knowledge of the "children of the plantation" to public attention. Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family (1998), written by a White descendant of slave owners, describes this complex legacy. Toni Morrison wrote that this usage of slaves was known as droit du seigneur, the "right of the lord", a term originating in the feudalism of medieval Europe.

See also

• Families
  • Essie Mae Washington-Williams, the mixed-race daughter of segregationist politician Strom Thurmond
  • Jefferson–Hemings controversy regarding the relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his slave, Sally Hemings, resulting in six children
  • Zephaniah Kingsley, Jr., a Quaker slave trader, married, or claimed to have married, a 13-year-old slave he purchased in Cuba; no documentation of the marriage, if it did take place, has ever been produced, but it was honored by U.S. courts after his death.
• Heritage
  • African American genealogy
  • Atlantic Creole
  • Issue (genealogy)
• History
  • Colonial American bastardy laws
  • Enslaved women's resistance in the United States and Caribbean
  • Female slavery in the United States
  • History of slavery in the United States
  • Slavery in the colonial history of the United States
• Marriage and procreation
  • Legitimacy (family law)
  • Marriage of enslaved people (United States)
  • Non-paternity event
  • Partus sequitur ventrem
  • Plaçage, interracial common law marriages in French and Spanish America, including New Orleans
  • Slave breeding in the United States

• Other slavery topics
  • House negro and field slaves in the United States, distinctions within the plantation system
  • Discrimination based on skin color or "colorism"
  • High yellow