Dear Florida, Why Do You Lie About “Natural Reproduction?”

The Truth is Forced Breeding and Rape

It isn’t fair to single out Florida, but they brag so much about how comprehensive their Black history program is that they must be highlighted. Florida’s guidelines are comprehensive; they cover a lot of material, though what they cover isn’t nearly as important as the truthfulness of what they say.

The topic that galls me most is what Florida teaches about “natural reproduction.” Multiple times in the guidelines, Florida asserts that slavery (meaning the number of enslaved people) increased naturally despite America’s best efforts to stop enslavement. Florida suggests America always wanted to limit or end slavery. While there were a few who felt that way, the majority of Americans did not.

“Clarification 1: Instruction includes how slavery increased through natural reproduction and the smuggling of human contraband, in spite of the desire of the Continental Congress to end the importation of slaves.”

“Clarification 1: Instruction includes examples of how the members of the Continental Congress made attempts to end or limit slavery (e.g., the first draft of the Declaration of Independence that blamed King George III for sustaining the slave trade in the colonies, the calls of the Continental Congress for the end of involvement in the international slave trade, the Constitutional provision allowing for congressional action in 1808).”

Natural reproduction, often referred to as natural increase, is the theory that the American slave population dramatically increased when other slave populations in South America and the Caribbean decreased despite a similar need for enslaved people. Historians credit either worse conditions on plantations outside America, or that Americans treated enslaved people better, so they thrived. America stopped the legal importation of slaves in 1808, for which Florida gives many pats on the back as an attempt to gradually eliminate slavery when no such thing was intended.

The Constitution allowed for the end of the importation of enslaved people after twenty years, with 1808 being the first available year. Thomas Jefferson ended the practice on the first available date, January 1, 1808. He praised it as a victory for human rights.

“I congratulate you, fellow citizens, on the approach of the period at which you may interpose your authority constitutionally to withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights which have been so long continued on the unoffending inhabitants of Africa, and which the morality, the reputation, and the best interests of our country, have long been eager to proscribe.” — Thomas Jefferson

It was a victory for plantation owners in Virginia (like Jefferson), Delaware, Maryland, and elsewhere, where excess slaves were sold at a higher price to states farther South where the need was greater. Their tobacco fields, which generally weren’t rotated, had ruined the land while there was a great need for slaves in the cotton, rice, sugar, and indigo plantations elsewhere. Ending the international slave trade was protectionist, making domestic-bred enslaved people more valuable.

What Florida, and much of America, doesn’t teach is that slaves in America were bred like cattle. There was little “natural” about the process. Jefferson wrote to George Washington that an enslaved woman giving birth every two years would lead to a 4% increase in profits. On many plantations, the biggest and strongest were selected as “bucks” and “breeders” to produce children of greater value. The price of a child when sold was related to their height and frame.

The other part of the breeding Florida never mentions is that many enslaved women were raped by their masters, which could extend as a courtesy to the master’s male friends and family members. This created a market of higher-priced, light-skinned enslaved people who could be sold for work as house slaves. The females might be sold as “fancies” or prostitutes to work in brothels. New terms came into vogue, such as quadroons and octaroons, to measure their percentage of Blackness.

The enslaved females who had the children of their white masters could not legally or safely say no. The power differential was too great. There was a fourteen-year-old girl whose entire extended family resided on the plantation of her master when she was approached. His power over the fates of her brothers, sisters, aunts, and mother made saying no impossible. The underage girl was raped by any definition. Her name was Sally Hemings. Sally’s mother was raped by Thomas Jefferson’s father-in-law, John Wayles. An English sea captain raped her mother. There have been several attempts to romanticize the relationship between Sally and Thomas Jefferson. I call bullshit, it was rape.

Florida’s guidelines have no mention of forced breeding or rape. They prefer natural reproduction as their explanation, but Florida is not alone. Maryland likes “natural increase” as their explanation.

“Planters gave women some time off during the last trimester of pregnancy, and the black population began to increase naturally.”

The National Institute of Health has much more to say, falling back on the magical natural increase as the explanation.

“This remarkable growth was the result of two factors: (1) continued importation of new slaves from Africa and the Caribbean; and (2) natural population growth, especially among American-born slaves, who lived longer lives and bore more children than African-born slaves. Although slave imports accounted for most of the population growth in the seventeenth century and continued to be a significant factor until the federal government abolished the legal importation of slaves in 1808, natural population growth was the more important of the two factors over the long run. The robust natural population growth of the slave population in the United States stands in dramatic contrast to negative rates of growth experienced by slave populations in the Caribbean and South America, which continued to grow only because of continued imports of slaves via the transatlantic slave trade.”- National Institute of Health

Historians like Jenny Bourne have perpetuated the lie, perhaps knowing no better, maybe knowing but not caring. Still, the substitution of natural increase for forced breeding and rape is prominent throughout America’s education system. Florida isn’t alone.

When Florida mandated the inclusion of “natural reproduction” into the curriculum, I suspect they knew they were lying. The need to not make students and educators feel bad has become more of a priority than teaching the truth. Did we expect the same people who lauded the benefits of enslavement to mention they were forcibly bred and raped?

I’ve written multiple times about slave breeding in the United States. It appears I must keep going until our schools and politicians decide truth is more important than propaganda. Until then, I keep writing.