slavery, part 3: the multi-layered trauma of wet nurses

The history of wet-nursing predates U.S. slavery, but investigating the forced labor of enslaved women as wet nurses brings in many different layers of trauma between Black and white women. Many of us have encountered the concept of a wet nurse before, but everything that went into this practice, from the timing of pregnancies, to the loaning or selling of Black women as wet nurses, to the disregard for the biological children of Black women and their needs...it's a whole dark, devastating, and incriminating history against the white women involved that lives on in women's choices (or lack thereof) today. Much appreciation to historians Emily West and R.J. Knight and Stephanie Jones-Rogers for their research.​