Mistress and Slave

Here is a stunning poem by an otherwise unknown female poet published in the Christian Recorder in the mid-19th century. The Christian Recorder was the widest circulating black newspaper during the 1800s. It was published by the African Methodist Episcopal Church. The printing operations were originally established just for producing hymnals and parish handouts, but expanded in the 1860s and 70s. Fighting against slavery and supporting the Union, the paper gained popularity during the Civil War. Until the end of the war, it was banned in the Southern States, but after the North's victory, sales expanded into the new Southern market. In the 1880s and 90s, a Western Christian Recorder was created for the frontier as well as a Southern Reporter for the Black Belt states.

This poem details the creepy narrative of white masters taking advantage of both their slaves and their wives, with women shifting unsteadily between the roles of maidens and mistresses. The speaker is a slave brushing the hair of her young white Lady:

"Mistress and Slave"

Ellen Malvin (12 Dec. 1863)

He wooed her with a lofty grace

And a haughty head unbent;

He touched her with his courtly smile,

And her simple heart outwent;

Ere ever she had learned

What its quicker beating meant,

She mutely dreams with folded hands,

While I, beside her chair,

Before his coming brush and wind

The sunny rings of hair

Slowly she lifts her eyelids

To the mirror, seeing ne'er

How her blue-eyed childish beauty

Pales before my image there.

Dreaming- with her jeweled fingers

Toying in their white unrest,

With the rosebuds that he brought her

Blood-red blossomed on her breast.

To her girlish heart he seemeth

Of all men the noblest, best;

And the world doth give him honor,

Grave men listen when he speaks,

And his tones send rosy pleasure

Flushing to her lily cheeks.

But a troop of dark-browned minions,

Trembling at his bidding wait,

And his shame is on the faces

Of the children at his gate.

But the fear, the shame, the sorrow,

Never haunt the dreamer here,

Dreaming o'er again, the music

Murmured in her maiden ear;

I can say the very words

That he whispered low and clear;

For when he uprose to leave her,

With the last kiss dropt for going,

There I met him face to face.

All his beauty on him glowing,

And my heart stood still within me,

In a sense of dread foreknowing,

For I saw the instant passion

Through his hot blood mounting higher,

Till his burning eyes devoured me

In their fierce exultant fire.

Darkly rose my doom before me,

Slave and victim as the rest;

She, a blossom to be gathered

Just to wither on his breast.

I, a queen to be dethroned

And ground beneath his heel in jest.

I a queen by right of beauty

I a slave by wrong of birth.

Lips and eyes and braided tresses

Valued at their market worth,

For one vile drop within my veins

That links me to the subject race;

To lose my crown of womanhood

For some foul semblance in its place,

Shall I curse her for her glad heart

Throbbing 'neath the snowy lace?

Shall I hate her for the whiteness

Of her cheek, so girlish fair,

For the simple Northern beauty

Falling down her golden hair?

Nay, let her dream on while she may,

For her I have no curse to spare,

Smiling 'mid her flowers and laces,

Petted child, and wife to be,

From this trance of happy worship

She shall bitterest waking see.

Not to us alone the sorrow,

We who suffer, we who toil,

For the serpent's sin so winding

Round their lives his slimy coil.

On our tyrants, our oppressors,

Fall the lightning curses fast,

On a nation old in sinning,

Ere the flush of youth is past,

Who the old world's crime of crimes,

In her first fresh furrow cast.

Not in vain our cries are cleaving

Upward to the throne of God.

Long her sons shall writhe in anguish

Under the avenging rod,

Ere the wo[e]ful sheaves are garnered

And the bloody vintage trod.

-Taken from African American Women's Poetry in the "Christian Recorder", 1855-1865: A Bio-Bibliography with Sample Poems - Eric Gardner