Elderly Experience Slavery

This note documents the lives of elderly enslaved people in Saint-Domingue - those who survived into their 50s, 60s, 70s, and beyond despite a system designed to work people to death. Reaching old age under slavery was itself an act of survival against extraordinary odds. Elders carried unique burdens (accumulated grief, physical deterioration from decades of forced labor, witnessing generations of suffering) and unique roles (knowledge keepers, cultural transmitters, community advisors, third gang supervisors). They were simultaneously revered within enslaved communities and exploited by enslavers until death or incapacity.