Children of the plantation

"Children of the plantation" was a euphemism used during the time of slavery in the United States, to identify the offspring of slave Black women with White men, usually the owner or one of his sons or the plantation overseer.

A rare instance of a mulatto baby portrayed next to the baby's darker mother. John Brown, about to be hanged, kisses the baby. Louis Ransom, 1863, reproduced as a Currier & Ives print.

This process was so immense and commonplace, that nearly 20% of the US Black (making them a mixed Afro-European group versus purely African) ethnic group's genetic contribution originates from Europe (much lower for non-US slave import origin such as Jamaican/Haitian).[1]

Such children were born into slavery, through an American legal doctrine known as partus sequitur ventrem. They were classified as mulattoes, a historic term for a multiracial person. The one drop rule meant that they could never be part of white society.

A minority of fathers treated these children well, sometimes providing educational or career opportunities, or manumitting them. Examples are Archibald and Francis Grimké, and Jefferson's children by Sally Hemings.

Alex Haley's Queen: The Story of an American Family (1993) is a historical novel, later a movie, that brought knowledge of the "children of the plantation" to public attention.

Edward Ball's Slaves in the Family (1998), written by a White descendant of slave owners, describes this complex legacy.

Toni Morrison wrote that this sexual usage of slaves was known as droit du seigneur,[2] the "right of the lord".