The nameless and the forgotten: maternal grief, sacred protection, and the archive of slavery

Introduction: Health, Well-Being, and Ability in Archaeology

“…Their research illuminates how the enslaved patients and workers in the hospital incorporated their own traditions into their healthcare practices, despite the brutal drudgery of sugar production. Health care, particularly fertility control, was an act of defiance against sexual exploitation and the capital claims slaveholders made on women’s bodies (Bankole 1998 ; Covey 2007 ; Fett 2000 ; Ross and Sollinger 2017 ; Turner 2017 ). Barnes ( 2021 ) interprets various artifacts from a rural plantation from differing positionalities of the women who lived and worked in the house to understand the ways reproduction shaped their lives over time and to draw connections between the control over Black women’s bodies exercised by slaveholders and the contemporary trend to limit women’s control of their reproductive health.…”

Hidden figures of nursing: The historical contributions of Black nurses and a narrative for those who are unnamed, undocumented and underrepresented

“…Like the enslaved healers, the primary exceptions were those who gained notoriety because of the reputation they held. With the exception of those who were accused of committing a crime (witchcraft or rebellion), those who were recorded as healers received only marginal documentation (Turner, 2017b).…”

Behind the Scenes of Hollywood: An Archaeology of Reproductive Oppression at the Intersections

“…This motherwork meant trauma, loss, and grief as a result of the death or sale of their children and the damage slavery did to their bodies that often prevented women from carrying fetuses to term (Cowling et al. 2017, 224; Turner 2017). In addition, while mothering their own children, enslaved women undertook motherwork in caring for the Taylors’ children, providing coerced intimate labor like changing diapers or breastfeeding, although with varying frequency (Cowling et al.…”

“…Yet these women were not passive. As historians of slavery insist, fertility control was an act of defiance against sexual exploitation and the capital claims slaveholders made on women's bodies (Bankole 1998; Bush 1990; Covey 2007; Fett 2000; Ross and Sollinger 2017; Turner 2017), and there is a disjuncture between enslaved women's resistance and the laws and social policies that passed slavery down the maternal line, encouraged rape, and separated family members as a key mechanism of degradation and white supremacy (Takaki 1979).…”