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"Children of the plantation" is aeuphemism referring to people with ancestry tracing back to the time ofslavery in the United States in which the offspring was born toblack African female slaves (either still in the state of slavery or freed) in the context of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and Non-Black men, usually the slave's owner, one of the owner's relatives, or theplantation overseer. These children were often considered to be the property of the slave owner and were often subjected to the same treatment as other slaves on the plantation. Many of these children were born into slavery and had no legal rights, as they were not recognized as the legitimate children of their fathers. The men who fathered these children often used their power and authority torape the black females who were under their control. Sometimes, girls as young as 13 were mothers in this case.

Plantation owners raping female slaves was a common occurrence. These children were born into slavery, through a legal doctrine known aspartus sequitur ventrem. They were classified asmulattoes, a former term for amultiracial person. Some of the fathers treated these children comparatively well, sometimes providing educational or career opportunities, ormanumitting (freeing) them. Examples areArchibald andFrancis Grimké, andThomas Jefferson's children bySally Hemings. Others treated their multiracial children as property;Alexander Scott Withers, for instance, sold two of his children to slave traders, where they were sold again.

Alex Haley'sQueen: The Story of an American Family (1993) is a historical novel, later a movie, that brought knowledge of the "children of the plantation" to public attention.Edward Ball'sSlaves in the Family (1998), written by a White descendant ofslave owners, describes this complex legacy.Toni Morrison wrote that this sexual usage of slaves was known asdroit du seigneur,^[1] the "right of the lord", a term originating in the feudalism of medieval Europe.

• Jefferson–Hemings controversy regarding the sexual relationship betweenThomas Jefferson and his slave,Sally Hemings, resulting in six children.
• Julia Chinn, an enslavedoctoroon who was the common-law wife of the ninth vice president of the United States, Richard Mentor Johnson.
• Enslaved women's resistance in the United States and Caribbean
• Female slavery in the United States
• Slavery in the colonial history of the United States
• Plaçage, interracial common law marriages in French and Spanish America, including New Orleans
• Slave breeding in the United States

• Williams, Caroline Randall (June 26, 2020)."You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument".The New York Times.

• American children
• African-American children
• American phraseology
• Euphemisms
• Slavery in the United States
• African-American genealogy
• African-American demographics
• Mulatto
• Plantations in the United States
• Race and society
• Sexual abuse

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