THIS IS THE AMOUNT OF FOOD A SLAVE AT MONTICELLO WAS GIVEN PER WEEK.
Actually, you’d be horrified to know how minimally slaveholders provided sustenance to their slaves. Even in the older and more “genteel” slaveholding bastions, slaves were given their allotments of food on a weekly basis — usually less than a quart of cornmeal a day and about 6 ounces of salt pork.
In 1850, the daily rations for an enslaved adult included 1 quart cornmeal and 5 to 8 ounces salted fish1. Enslaved people also supplemented their rations with produce and meat from their own gardens, poultry, and foraged wild plants1. Pork and corn were the primary rations issued to those who were enslaved...
Jefferson provided the enslaved people at Monticello with some food, clothing, firewood, shelter and medical care. The enslaved workers were given weekly food rations and twice yearly clothing rations, but they had to add to that with whatever they could grow and make themselves — in the limited time they had to themselves.
This included men and women who worked in the fields — we’re talking up at dawn, a full day’s labor, then standing in line to get their cotton weighed by moonlight. If they came up short on the weight expected of them, they would be whipped with a lash the next day. Being whipped burned a lot of calories too, as you might expect.
Here are just a few diseases that slaves would develop as a matter of course:
European physicians in the West Indies frequently shared their knowledge of black-related diseases with North American colleagues.[2] Diseases that were thought to be “negro diseases” included, but were not limited to:[2]
- tetanus
- nascentium, or “nine day fits”
- high infant mortality
- worms
- diphtheria
- whooping cough
- cholera
- typhoid
- tuberculosis
- influenza
- hepatitis
- rheumatism
- “scabies”
- “frambesia” (yaws)
- lepra vulgaris and psoriasis
- leprosy
- syphilis
Thanks for your comment — Myla
