What Owners Really Did…

Medical experimentation. Without consent or care, among the many horrors that young enslaved women endured, the use of their bodies for medical experimentation represents a particular violation that combined physical torture with the complete absence of medical ethics. This wasn’t healthcare. It was exploitation dressed up in the language of medical progress, using black women’s bodies as disposable test subjects for procedures that would later benefit white patients.

Enslaved women were subjected to gynecological experiments and surgical procedures, often without any anesthesia whatsoever. Let me emphasize this. Invasive surgeries that modern patients would receive general anesthesia for were performed on conscious women who could feel everything. The justification, a racist pseudoscientific belief that black people didn’t feel pain the way white people did.

A lie convenient for those who wanted to experiment on living subjects without providing pain relief. The physician J. Marian Sims, often celebrated as the father of modern gynecology, developed his surgical techniques through experiments on enslaved women. These women, including Anara, Betsy, and Lucy, underwent repeated surgical procedures without anesthesia, with some dying from complications and others having their bodies dissected post-mortem to advance medical knowledge.

The procedures Sims developed treated vicco vaginal fistulas, a complication of childbirth particularly common among enslaved women due to brutal forced breeding conditions and inadequate medical care during pregnancy. So in a terrible irony, enslaved women suffered complications from forced reproduction. And then their suffering from those complications was exploited to develop treatments that would primarily benefit white women who would, unlike the black women whose torture made these treatments possible, receive anesthesia. Ovarian surgeries and other gynecological procedures performed on enslaved women sometimes led to death. And when women died, their bodies were often dissected post-mortem without any consent or respect for the deceased. Even in death, their bodies were not their own. Medical students practiced surgical techniques on enslaved corpses, treating these bodies as teaching tools rather than human remains deserving dignity and respect.

What makes this particularly insidious is how it was justified. Medical professionals convinced themselves they were advancing human knowledge, making important discoveries, contributing to the greater good.

Burning and fire, torture as ultimate terror. While most forms of torture inflicted on enslaved people were designed to extract labor, ensure compliance, or serve enslavers sexual desires, one particular form was reserved for those accused of the most serious acts of resistance.

Burning. This was punishment designed not just to kill but to terrorize entire communities to create spectacles of suffering so horrific that the memory alone would prevent others from considering resistance. The use of fire as punishment included various forms: burning at the stake, immolation, scalding with hot liquids, branding with hot irons, and burning of specific body parts like toes.

Each method created specific agony, but all shared the quality of being among the most painful ways a human being can suffer. Historical records document multiple instances of enslaved people being burned alive for alleged crimes. In the New York conspiracy of 1741, 13 black men were burned at the stake following accusations of arson and rebellion conspiracy.

In South Carolina, a man named Dan was burned alive for killing a white man while allegedly defending a woman. The account describes how witnesses forced to watch fainted from the horror of the spectacle. In Mississippi in 1842, two enslaved people were burned at the stake following accusations of murder and rape with newspapers like the Liberator reporting on the event.

The public nature of these executions was deliberate. They were designed to be witnessed by as many people as possible, particularly by the enslaved community. While most documented burnings involved men, young women were not immune from fire related torture. Harriet Jacobs was scalded with hot fat as punishment, possibly in retaliation for helping family members with escape attempts.

Burns from hot fat or oil are particularly severe because the liquid aderes to skin, continuing to burn even after initial contact. In Grenada, Mississippi, a man named Paul was burned with hot paddles after whipping failed to break it. He had been helping enslaved people escape via underground railroads in Hines County, Mississippi.

Around 1835, a runaway named Henry had his toes burned off. These localized burnings were meant to inflict maximum pain while keeping victims alive and theoretically able to continue working. Though the permanent disabilities they created often made that impossible for young women specifically designated as virgins or sold in the fancy trade, while we don’t have many direct accounts of them being burned at the stake, they were subject to threats of burning and related tortures.

The knowledge that such punishments existed, that other enslaved people had been burned alive, created an atmosphere of absolute terror. The threat alone was often enough to ensure compliance.