It is a somber truth that marginalized groups have often been ignored when illuminating events of the past, since white hegemony has sought to suppress the voices of and injustices committed upon the "inferior" for many centuries. It is no surprise then that the study of the most marginalized group to date, black enslaved women, had little to no influence in informing historical perspectives on slavery for many years. They were essentially mute in terms of cultivating the greater portion of traditional literature regarding the topic. However, with the development of women's studies as an accredited academic exploration as well as the emergence of minority histories endorsed by democratically-minded historians throughout the 70's, we have witnessed "the flourishing of almost a cult of pluralism in matters pertaining to history and memory". These breakthroughs in academia have contributed especially to the inclusion and representation of black women who took part in slavery. In this essay I will study trends in the modern historiographical trajectory of this once scholarly and socially peripheral demographic.
Initial literature on enslaved black women analyzes stereotypes constructed of African women brought to the new world. Published in 1972, "Reflections on the Black Woman's Role in the Community of Slaves", by Angela Davis, discusses ideological origins of the black slave woman's characterization as aggressive and matriarchal by white scholars. Davis claims that although the black woman performed jobs that "expressed the socially conditioned inferiority of women" she was still exempt from designations of femininity that would have otherwise sheltered her from carrying out more arduous, "manly" tasks. Thus, in order to maximize the total labor accrued from a slave woman, she "had to be annulled as [a] woman, that is, as [a] woman in her historical stance of wardship under the entire male hierarchy".
