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Everything You Need to Know About Slaves' Lives.
Many slaves had to clear land, dig ditches, cut and haul wood, slaughter livestock, and make repairs to buildings and tools. They also worked as mechanics, blacksmiths, drivers, and carpenters. Sometimes they even worked as house servents. They were nannies for their master's children.
Food:
Housing:
Punishment:
Clothing:
Work:
Men were given pants to wear and long knee-length coats for the winter. Women were given dresses and, in the winter, heavy wraps that they used as shawls. Children were given miniaml clothing, which usually consisted of a long dress-like shirt until they hit puberty and were given better clothing. Sometimes children were not even given clothing.
Slaves' diet usually consisted of 8 pounds of pork, fish, or bushel of corn for one month. However, it depended on what food was produced on the plantation they worked on. Slaves rarely every became healthy. The food they needed to survive was barely reached which was one reason why many slaves were infected with diseases.
Many slaves were punished for not workings fast enough, being late getting to the fields, not listening to their masters, running away, and many more reasons. Punishments were usually very harsh. Some punishments included whipping, torture, imprisonment, being sold, and sometimes even murder. No matter how harsh the slaves' punishment was, the masters were never punished.
Housing of slaves varied on where they worked. On most plantations, the cabins where they lived were simple and had very little furniature. The cabins held many slave families and were very crowded. Slaves were sometimes given rooms in the main houses, but that was rare. But every cabin always had characteristics of the families that lived there.
These interviews [also primarty sources] will give you a better idea of what slaves like were really like back then.
This is a picture of what the cabins looked like for the slaves, as you can see they were very simple.
This is a picture of a cabin that slaves might have lived in while they were working on a plantation. In this picture you can also see the clothing the slaves were given to wear.
This picture shows you what majority of slaves did during the days. They worked every day of the week except Sunday.
This picture shows you what some slaves used as utinsels. The were pretty much just holes in the ground.
"I grew up like a neglected weed -- ignorant of liberty, having no experience of it." ~Harriet Tubman
This is a trailer for the series African American Lives 2. This series looks at the ancestors of multiple celebrities and sees what the endured during the time they were slaves.
