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Episode 2: Owned
As Smith remembered, “Long Peggy’s” status among her fellow slaves
rested on her master’s assessment of her as an efficient breeder of
slaves. Indeed, her master predicated her future freedom on the birth and
survival of her twenty-fifth child… Smith’s recollections… force us to dig
deeper into the historical significance of coercive and violent forms of
reproductive sex during slavery.
– Gregory D. Smithers, Associate Professor of History
Virginia Commonwealth University
WARNING: This episode contains physical, sexual and verbal violence
and should be previewed prior to in-class viewing.
Summary
Aminata has grown into a beautiful young
woman. Her enslaver, Robinson Appleby,
rapes her, but Georgia’s medicine ensures
she will not carry a child as a result of this
violence.
Chekura learns of Aminata’s whereabouts
and they are reunited and marry by
“jumping the broom.” Their happiness is
short-lived when Appleby discovers the
child she gives birth to – May – is not his.
Enraged that she has been intimate with a
man of her own choosing, he takes the child
while Aminata sleeps and sells her.
Appleby is eager to get rid of Aminata too.
Impressed by her intelligence and skill,
indigo inspector, Solomon Lindo, purchases
Aminata. After Lindo’s wife and son
succumb to small pox, Lindo asks her to
accompany him on a trip to New York.
When Aminata discovers that Lindo
brokered the sale of her daughter, May, she
is determined to use this trip to emancipate
herself.
Context
In 1636, the first slave carrier was built and
launched from Massachusetts. The ship was
named “Desire” (PBS). In 1662, Virginia
passed a law of hereditary slavery,
consigning all persons born of an enslaved
mother to enslavement for life. By the time
Aminata set foot on Sullivan Island in South
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