Dublin Core
Title
Subject
Description
Child labor at Georgetown
“Child Labor at Bohemia Plantation, July 1792” is ledger entry that captures a payment from Bohemia farm to hired slaves and people of color. Among those slaves were two children, who the records note as “free Nelly’s 2 Children.” The document was made on July 9, 1792 and carries deeper meanings, such as slave labor and racial classification. The document illustrates that slave labor was vital on the plantations in harvest seasons, as slaves were thought to be more ‘suitable’ to work in plantations. The thought of slaves being more suitable to work shaped the power dynamics in the society because slaves and people of color were viewed as inferior and were excluded from the society as many laws and cultural norms were not in favor of slaves and people of color. Several laws enforced discriminatory acts against slaves and people of color. The code Noir, for instance, forced slaves to convert to Christianity and David Walker in Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World shows that people of color could not represent themselves in a court. Ta-Nehisi Coates in “The case for reparations” also suggests that it was hard for people of color to obtain mortgages.
Slave labor not only shaped the economy, but also supported Georgetown financially. This shows that Georgetown relied on revenue from slave trade and slave labor to support the institutions as a whole. Matthew Quallen mentions that, “slave labor [supported] the Jesuits education endeavors.” He also mentions that slavery built Georgetown.[1] However, this document also demonstrates that free labor was used in the plantation. This might be because free labor was thought to be cheaper than slave labor. Br. Joseph Mobberly argued for this notion when he calculated the cost of slave labor and his calculations demonstrated that employing hired workers would be cheaper than slave labor.[2] However, this raises an important question: were free people of color and slaves treated differently on plantations?
Moreover, the document sheds light on the different ways slaves and people of color were categorized in. Slaves and people of color were labeled differently in the document. For instance, the mother of the two children was named “free Nelly” while Patrick’s name was accompanied by the word “negro.” In addition, this categorizing was not only limited to names because the document shows a clear difference in the paid amount between the slaves and the people of color. This categorizing demonstrates that slaves and free people of color were commodified and racially classified. Most importantly, the document shows that children were being used for their labor because the records capture a payment to two children. This also raises an important question: what could the children do on the plantation that the other workers could not? In other words, why was it so important to hire children?
[1] Matthew Quallen, “Slavery Remnants, Buried and Overlooked” Adam Rothman, Elsa Barraza Mendoza, and Laurent Savoy, eds. Facing Georgetown’s History: A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021), 234.
[2] “A Jesuit Overseer Calculates the cost of Slave Labor, 1815.”“Slavery Remnants, Buried and Overlooked” Adam Rothman, Elsa Barraza Mendoza, and Laurent Savoy, eds. Facing Georgetown’s History: A Reader on Slavery, Memory, and Reconciliation (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2021), 119.