The God Part of Him

Abstract

This chapter explores the considerable, often insurmountable, constraints slavery placed on family and fatherhood, including sexual exploitation, forced pairing, breeding, and separation. Despite their adaptations, including abroad marriages and multilocal kin networks, enslaved people faced encumbered parenting regardless of their household arrangements. Although the emasculation of slavery imposed perverse dilemmas, enslaved men endeavored to act as caretakers and retained a sense of self, humanity, and manhood through love of family, religious faith, and their own definition of honor.