These forced sexual relationships often began with cruel beatings before the slave would submit to savage rapes. Out of fear of pain or death, female slaves had no other alternative but to obey their masters. According to Lyerly, "As many historians of slavery have noted, slave women lived not only with slavery"s routine restraints upon their will; they also had to fight for control over their bodies. Victims of sexual abuse by whites, slave women were often subject to the will of others in the most intimate ways" (209). Sexually, black women had no control over their bodies and no choice of denying their masters.

             The most memorable slave and master relationship were between Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Sally hemings was owned by Jefferson, to whom she bore many children. However, The affair between the two sparked a controversy because Jefferson was also an owner of slaves. These kinds of relationships were quite common for the time period. It is known for some slave women to be willing to have children by their masters, hoping that it would give them privileges not given to other slaves on the plantation. "While some black women may have regarded sexual unions with whites as advantageous, providing privileges and possible manumissions, such relations also represented a natural extension of the power of white over black" (Gaspar and Hine 194). Although Jefferson eventually gave Sally Hemings her freedom after years of being oppressed, and took care of her children. Jefferson still was still condoning the exploitation of women when he said, "I consider the labor of a breeding wom!.

             an as no object, and that a child raised every two years is of more profit than the crop of the best man" (Gaspar 147). Slave women often became victims of harsh abuse by being forced into sexual activities by white men, especially when the trading of slaves from Africa had ended in the early nineteenth century.