Suicide, infanticide, and self-mutilation by slaves in the United States

Overall suicide rates of black slaves in the United States are believed to have been comparatively low, in part due to cultural beliefs common to both Africa and African-American communities.

[5] The highest rates of suicide amongst enslaved people brought to Thirteen Colonies and United States appeared to have occurred during and immediately after the Middle Passage.

[8] A "disproportionate amount" of the suicides that occurred in the immediate wake of being trafficked appear to have been individuals who had been high-status members of their communities back home.

[6] An example of this may be found in 1898 account of the people who were illegally trafficked to the United States on the Wanderer, which stated that a number of survivors later committed suicide under the belief that "if they would jump into the sea and drown themselves they would be carried back to Africa by the good spirits...among them being one called King Mingo, who decoyed two children to St. Simon's beach, during the absence of his mistress, and all three of them jumped from a high bluff into the swift current and were drowned.

District Attorney Francis Scott Key advised Nathan Allen, husband of Dorcas and father of the children, to raise money to try to buy their freedom.

The mother bore it with patience for a while, but seeing her mistress get no better, she knocked the child's brains out with an axe, went to the Court House, told the circumstances, gave herself up, and was committed to prison.

"[25] According to Modern Medea (1999), a re-examination of the Margaret Garner case in history and legend, "In November 1859 on the Georgia plantation of Charles Colcock Jones, a slave named Lucy came under suspicion for giving birth to and then smothering her newborn with assistance from a black midwife.

[27] According to Francis Scott Key, in the early days of the District of Columbia, an enslaved woman "on learning that she had been sold, promptly grabbed a meat cleaver and hacked off one of her hands, rendering her unfit for sale in the eyes of the slave trader.

"[28] In 1829 an enslaved man who was part of a coffle being transported South by Virginia trader Jourdan M. Saunders "got possession of an axe, and cut off all of the fingers of his right hand.

"[29] In 2003, a woman living in Maysville, Kentucky, recalled her great-grandmother telling her about "a slave mother so bereft at her forced separation from her daughter, who was being sold downriver, that she cut off her hand in despair.