Coerced sexual contact with white men pervaded enslaved women’s lives.

Evidence

An analysis by historian Thelma Jennings of 514 narratives of formerly enslaved people found that 12 percent of the female authors referred to experiences of coerced sex by white men. Of those women, 35 percent had fathers who were white men or had given birth to children fathered by white men. Jennings noted that the numbers were likely far larger, given the reluctance of recently freed Black women to discuss such private matters with their white interviewers. Census records show that in 1850, roughly 11 percent of the enslaved population was classified as mulatto. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 218

Categorization

• SHARE: The 1850 census figure that 11% of the enslaved population was classified as mulatto is a striking hard number worth sending to anyone working on demographic history.