By Zoë Dales
Edited by Katie Simpson and Symran Annika Saggar
Intersectional violence perpetrated against African American women in the Reconstruction
South was utilised as a scheme to ensure the continuation of white supremacy in American society. Both individually and collectively, white men consistently tried to reinstate pre-existing power structures that existed in the Antebellum era through various forms of violence. In both the Antebellum period and the era of Reconstruction, space played a significant role in permitting such violence. Whether it was behind closed doors or in public areas, in all of the following cases, African American women suffered at the hands of white men in white spaces. The following essay will explore the experiences of African American women, and how white men reacted to them claiming and asserting their newfound rights in society. It will start by investigating three cases in which wage-earning African American women suffered at the hands of their white employers: those of Mary Stewart, Betty Carrion, and a freedwoman named Rosanna. Next, the essay will explore an instance of physical violence against freedwoman, Minerva Banks, by her former owner, Edward Sommers. Lastly, this essay will consider a case of violence against a young African American woman, Phillis Ruffin, who attended school and consequently suffered a brutal attack at the hands of a mob of white men.
It is important to contextualise the aforementioned sources through a short, chronological
reflection of the Antebellum era and the era of Reconstruction, including emancipation in 1865 and what it meant for African Americans. The Antebellum period lasted from the late
eighteenth century through to the inauguration of the Civil War in 1861. This is the period in
which the South witnessed dramatic economic growth, which can be accredited to the region’s agricultural expansion. The Southern economy profited significantly from the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the domestic slave trade, which thrived off the exploitation of the black population. African American women in particular suffered significantly under the institution of slavery. Not only were they oppressed on the grounds of race, but also on the grounds of gender. Societal assumptions considered women both physically and mentally weaker than their male counterparts, despite women being forced to partake in similar activities, and working on the plantations or in their domestic roles from dawn till dusk, regardless of pregnancy or other health-related difficulties. [1] Furthermore, women’s bodies were further exploited for their reproductive systems, which were crucial in ensuring the continuation of domestic slavery in America following the abolition of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in 1807. Consequently, enslaved women often found themselves victims of psychological, physical, and sexual violence. However, that of sexual nature has a deafening silence in American history.
Additionally, as stated in the work of Deborah Gray White, ‘much of what is important to
African Americans is not visible to whites, and much of what is important to women is not
visible to men.’ For this reason, the voices of women often went unheard. In that sense, the
superiority of colonial epistemology ensured that the knowledge systems of white Americans
were practised and considered as the ‘truth,’ whilst constructing African Americans and their
knowledge systems as non-existent and invisible. When assessing the position of women as
targets of intersectional racial and gender violence, it is essential to consider the silences in
historical records, and what they themselves represent and signal. Additionally, when African American women were in white spaces during the Antebellum period, it was often the domestic space, within the walls of their master’s home, where they worked as house servants or cooks. Due to their frequent interactions with white people and men, enslaved women ‘understood the value of silence and secrecy’ and disguised their true feelings with a smile or impassivity in order to protect themselves and their thoughts. [2] This proves difficult for those interested in the history of enslaved women in the Antebellum period as records reflecting the perspective of African American women are sparse. Thus, the voices of enslaved women in the Antebellum period often went unheard.
Following the enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and the culmination of the American Civil War in 1865, Southern towns and cities witnessed a rapid increase in their
African American populations. In the South’s ten largest cities, the African American
population doubled in the years 1865-70. [3] Despite wanting to disassociate themselves from their ties to slavery and overturn both the real and symbolic authority white Americans had over them, [4] African Americans were liberated in a society that was unaccepting of their newfound rights; from ownership of themselves and their children to having agency in
navigating the free labour economy, to challenging their maltreatment. Emancipation itself was not what many African Americans envisioned, despite obtaining their legal freedom, they remained constrained in a multitude of ways. White men continuously tried to oppress the freed population to achieve their socio-political agendas, both individually and collectively. It was the era of Reconstruction that witnessed the rise of numerous white supremacist social and political groups that were founded on the basis of promoting whiteness and oppressing the African American population. Examples of these include the Ku Klux Klan, the Knights of the White Camellia, the White League and the Red Shirts. Such groups, as well as the violence inflicted on African Americans in the former Confederacy, shattered the vision of multiracial harmonious coexistence in society. Notably, parallels can be drawn to the aged notion of charivari, a ritual of popular justice which involved public shaming and embarrassment when order was challenged. [5] The above-mentioned groups systematically violated their targets with the aim of restoring white male superiority in its Antebellum form. [6] Consequently, African American communities recognised the vulnerability of their women and, therefore, it was amongst their top priorities to protect them from any forms of intersectional violence. [7] The violence witnessed in the Reconstruction South is arguably an extension of the forms of violence utilised by whites in the Antebellum period. When navigating the free labour economy, African American women only had the skills they had acquired from their experiences when formerly enslaved, many of which were only transferable in similar roles as sharecroppers or domestic workers. Thus, African American women often found themselves in white-owned or white-dominated spaces after their emancipation. Nevertheless, the African American woman’s ability to make use of her newfound rights is evident in the following thematic case studies. The following cases do not solely show instances of violence in white spaces, but they also demonstrate the capability of African American women to make use of such rights. Nonetheless, the prolonged suffering of African Americans through the era of Reconstruction is reflective of not only racism that existed on a public level, but also the institutional racism, and the architectures of enmity that permitted white Americans to continue their pursuit of oppression and white supremacy in society.
After emancipation from the shackles of slavery, slave owners believed that they had a claim
to the bodies of African American women. This notion surrounding the ownership of the
African American female body extended to the era of Reconstruction and despite being
contracted labourers, African American women continued to be the subjects of physical
violence. Under the institution of slavery, African American women were tormented in a
multitude of ways. This is evident in a document from South Carolina on May 29, 1848, titled
‘Letters to R. C. Ballard regarding slave woman abuse’. In this confidential letter, we see J. M.
Duffield pleading for the purchase of an enslaved woman named Maria, who was suffering
‘great agony mentally and bodily’ at the hands of her owner. Maria’s ‘feeble frame’ was ‘lashed... like an ox, until the blood gushe[d] from her’. [8] Not only did slaveowners in the
Antebellum period ware down their female slaves mentally, but also physically, making them
increasingly vulnerable. Moreover, despite being used to free Maria, Duffield’s use of
derogatory language dehumanises Maria and renders her life expendable at the hands of the
white Americans, ‘othering’ her, and reducing her status to that which parallels an animal. Such discourse enabled white men to determine who was considered human and not; words were not just considered to describe bodies outside of those who were considered humans but were also used as a means to render them invisible and legitimately make them non-human. This reflects the extent to which white men preyed on the vulnerable bodies of society’s most marginalised.
An extension of such behaviour is evident in the era of Reconstruction, particularly in the
treatment of wage-earning African American women in Southern society. In the case of Betty
Carrion, she testifies to the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands (BRF&AL)
in attempt to claim $7 her former employer owed her. Nevertheless, the testimony remarkably reveals the continuation of violence perpetrated against African American women in white spaces. Betty Carrion attests to have been abused both verbally and physically by her employer subsequent to utilising and asserting her newfound rights. Mr Dutart had investigated noises he had heard in the kitchen when Betty had her relative visiting. After refusing to be quiet on the grounds that Mr Dutart had formerly permitted Betty to have visitors, she was struck with an ironing board numerous times. After being threatened with jail by Dutart’s wife the following morning, Betty took it upon herself to leave so as to ensure the safety of herself and her family. Despite the verbal and physical abuse, what Betty was primarily concerned with was getting paid for her labour. Such a distraction from a critical event signals the normality of such occurrences in American society - particularly that of intersectional nature. Despite turning to the authorities for assistance to claim the money she was owed, the outcome solely proved beneficial for Mr Dutart, as the amount due was what he had calculated. This account assumed that Betty had stolen half a pint of rice which had been given to her by Mrs Dutart to make starch. Furthermore, the violent physical reaction of Mr Dutart and the threats made by both
himself and his wife are disregarded and overlooked, regardless of being triggered by an
assertion of rights. This case reveals the attempt of white men to assert pre-existing gender and racial power structures in southern Reconstruction society, and the inability of the justice system to address such architectures of enmity. [9]
This is further evident in the case of Rosanna of May and June 1866 in Virginia, who was
murdered at the hands of her white employer, A. Jones. It was reported that Mr Jones had shot Rosanna after she attempted to escape following been beaten by him with a stick. After
disregarding his order to stop, Rosanna was shot at twice upon fleeing the physical violence
perpetrated against her. In January of the same year, Dr Watson testified that he was summoned in January to dress the wound on her left arm - one which could not have been inflicted by a stick. The May report states that it had not been the first time Mr Jones had attempted to shoot Rosanna, and that he had done it once before but had missed his target. Despite evidently being harmful to African American women in society, Mr Jones was released on bail. The June report states that ‘justice was not given to the woman’, and that ‘Rosanna was induced to give the testimony she gave through fear of the said Wm. A. Jones’. This is a clear example of the atmosphere that white men tried to create in Southern society. They achieved their goals through inciting fear and profiting from the vulnerability of African American women in white domestic spaces, in Rosanna’s case being the kitchen. It seems as if white men believed that it was within the boundaries of their property that they were protected from the law (which evidently, they were), clear from racial biases in determining the outcome of the case. This is further advanced by the sheer number of witnesses; it is made clear that the case of Rosanna had only been brought to the surface through concerns of the public. [10] The report once again reveals the attempt of white men to assert their power over wage-earning African American women that were partaking in gendered labour in white-dominated spaces, aiming to re-claim their patriarchal and racial authority through methods of violence, fear, and terror. [11]
The report relating to the case of Mary Stewart is also essential to consider when assessing
cases of intersectional violence in the Reconstruction South. The report is dated only a few
months after the culmination of the Civil War on August 20th, 1865, in Louisiana. Mary was
another victim of gender and racially motivated violence by her white employer, Demarcus D. Day, who had forced her into her house. From the report, it is clear that Day’s violence was racially motivated when he stated that African Americans were ‘all free n*****s and that he was going to kill the damned free n*****s’. Regardless of emancipation granting African
Americans basic human rights, such as ownership of their body and labour, this case uncovers the extent to which white males went to pursue their ultimate goal of white superiority in society. In her house, Demarcus Day had cut Mary twice on her arm with a pocketknife, he then proceeded to take her to a white household, where he cut her head, and then towards his house where he said he would keep her till morning to kill her. After trying to escape, fearing for her life, Day stabbed her in the side with the same knife and tore her clothes. The fact that Day was able to attack Mary in her own house shows the lack of protection African American women had in society. Notwithstanding living away from their employers, African American women were no less at risk from forms of physical violence than that which they had experienced when living with slaveowners in the Antebellum period. Demarcus Day had been arrested for assault and battery on Mary Stewart with an intention to kill, yet was released on his bond despite remaining a threat to the African American community. Like the cases of Betty Carrion and Rosanna, such events reveal the dependency of white men on white spaces to pursue their socio-political aims under the protection the boundaries provided for them.
The vulnerability of African American women when partaking in gendered labour in white
spaces was also taken advantage of by former slaveowners in attempt to reclaim who they
considered their property. This reveals the failure of white men to accept the legal changes that had occurred as a result of emancipation, and their disbelief in the co-existence of white
Americans with the African American population. The ownership of slaves in the Antebellum
period established a racial hierarchy that supported a notion of white supremacy that white
men attempted to extend into Reconstruction. This is evident in the affidavit of Minerva Banks, which reveals the need of white men to demonstrate power and control through manipulation and physical violence. Minerva Banks had considered herself free since Christmas of 1863. After making Tennessee her home, she worked as a Cook in Nashville, before taking on employment for Lawyer Davis on June 1, 1865. Banks, however, had resigned on the grounds that his wife ‘was always unkind... and abused’ her. Shortly after, Banks found work in the household of Mr W. H. Martin. Subsequently, Edward Sommers, Banks’ former owner, tracked down her newest residence and threatened to shoot her if she attempted to ‘resist or run’, as he was ‘afraid he would have to die before seeing me (Banks) as he wanted to give me one good thrashing’, similar to the aforementioned experience of Mary Stewart. Minerva Banks was subsequently forced into the woods, where Sommers hung her up on a tree and beat her, 'cutting some severe gashes’ and breaking one of her fingers. The account of Minerva Banks demonstrates the limitations African American women faced post-emancipation in white spaces, regarding the navigation of a free labour economy and legally regaining control of their bodies. [12] Banks leaving her second employment in June 1865 reflects the liberties associated with the free labour economy: the freedom of moving between employment. Though, Minerva Banks’ account does not cease to uncover the atrocities African American women were forced to confront after their emancipation at the hands of white men. The experiences of African American women showcase the consistency of violence in both the physical and verbal forms. Once again, white men felt the need to use verbal threats in attempt to assert their power over African American bodies. From the affidavit, Sommers displays a somewhat obsession with his former power, and an inability to accept the changes that legal freedoms granted to African Americans in the era of Reconstruction. Many white men perhaps felt as if matters were to be taken into their own hands, that the legislation did not adhere to the social ideals the Confederate South had once abided by, and that the matters of ensuring the persistence of white supremacy was an individual responsibility. The use of weaponry, such as guns, is also crucial to consider as it firstly represents the ruthlessness of such men when preparing for potential disputes with African Americans, reflecting the low value placed on their lives, and it secondly
reveals their anxieties surrounding emancipated African Americans in society. The utilisation
of a gun primarily serves as a tangible threat to the lives of those they are confronting, but also signals premeditation of violence. The whipping of Minerva Banks was an extension of
Antebellum punishment – a sadistic power tactic utilised with the intention of re experiencing the past: an obsession with the abuse and reduction of African American woman. Nonetheless, despite her traumatic experiences, Banks does not cease from continuing to utilise her newfound rights and informing the authorities of her experiences. Despite the outcome of the case of Minerva Banks being unclear, it remains a representation of the reaction of white men to the African American community’s acquisition of rights and freedom, and a manipulation and protection of the white space in reasserting dated power structures on African American women through forms of physical and verbal violence.
In the Antebellum period, the educational history of African American was, in essence, filled
with struggle and contention. By the culmination of the Civil War in 1865, very few African
Americans were literate, thus very few educational opportunities existed for the African
American community, particularly in the Reconstruction South. South Carolina and Georgia
were the first two states that passed legislation to prohibit the teaching of African Americans.
In 1740, South Carolina criminalised the teaching of enslaved African Americans. By 1830,
Georgia had followed South Carolina’s footsteps and implemented a system of punishment for those who were caught teaching African Americans how to read and write. After the Nat Turner rebellion in 1831, South Carolina passed a bill in 1834 that prohibited teaching African Americans, enslaved or free, literacy skills. Thus, education in the Antebellum period was a white-dominated space. [13] White Americans evidently found education and the acquisition of literacy skills as a threat to society as this provided African Americans with skills that would facilitate communication, education, and navigating the nation. Hence, when African Americans entered the space of education in the era of Reconstruction, it was highly contested by the white population. Once again, white people turned to violence to assert pre-existing power structures in society. This is evident in the case of Phillis Ruffin in North Carolina, published in Harper’s Weekly Magazine on September 14, 1867. Harper’s Weekly was a pro-Union magazine that utilised photography and illustrations as a means of portraying political messages to the public. The magazine played a crucial role in the dissemination of information surrounding the institution of slavery and broadened the national debate. [14] Furthermore, during the Civil War, Harper’s Weekly was a popular magazine that ran Union propaganda, and the inclusivity of such images widened the reach of the audiences, as it was accessible for those who were literate and illiterate. Given that the aforementioned clipping is reflecting an occurrence in the former Confederacy, the contents must be analysed as such. Like Maria, Phillis Ruffin was subjected to ‘a deed of lawless and inhumane violence’. [15] Ruffin had the misfortune of being provoked by a white girl who attempted to physically assault her. As a result of resisting the strike from the girl, Ruffin was then tracked down to her school on February 14, 1867, where a mob of white men burst into her school, forcefully removed her from class and dragged her into the woods, where she was brutally beaten by the group of men. [16] The article states that one of the five men had lashed her one hundred and twenty-six times, with rods three feet long and around a half-inch thick. By the end, Ruffin’s half-naked body was blood-soaked. The perpetrators were sentenced but, given the nature of the crime, the sentence and fines were unsatisfactory, with a few only having to work for two months and being fined $25.17. Outnumbered and vulnerable in a white-dominated space, Phillis Ruffin is a clear example of the way in which white men collectively attempted to reinstate dated racial and gender power structures through methods utilised in the Antebellum period under the institution of slavery.
In conclusion, it is clear that African American women were victims of intersectional violence
in the era of Reconstruction. In other words, white men both individually and collectively
sought to reinstate racial and gender power structures that existed under the institution of
slavery through means of verbal and physical violence and manipulated white spaces in their
systematic pursuit of achieving their social and political goals of white supremacy. White
spaces provided protection for white men when perpetrating crimes on African American
women, despite being legally considered free in the era of Reconstruction, African American
women remained oppressed in Southern society. When navigating the free labour economy
that they existed within, African American women experienced an extension of Antebellum
violence. Despite being contracted labourers, in the cases of Betty Carrion, Rosanna, Mary
Stewart, and Minerva Banks, contract provided little protection from the brutalities they had
undergone whilst enslaved. From being verbally abused to physically beaten, and in the case of Banks, even shot, white men violated and abused the bodies of African American women in every possible way. Evident in the case of Minerva Banks, many African American women
found it difficult to escape all associations of slavery when former slave owners refused to
acknowledge the rights that legislation had provided the African American community.
Additionally, the instance of Phillis Ruffin reflects the ways in which white men collectively
assaulted the body of the African American woman, and the extent to which they sought to
assert the notion of white superiority in American society. What all the aforementioned cases
portray are the anxieties existent in southern Reconstruction society surrounding the newfound rights of African Americans and their steps towards equality. Given that in the Antebellum period, the southern economy thrived off the exploitation of African Americans under the institution of slavery, white Americans found it difficult to view themselves as equal to those they had once suppressed. Despite in numerous cases turning to the authorities for assistance, in almost no circumstances did the perpetrators suffer the consequences of their actions. Thus, it is not surprising that such instances were reoccurring. Moreover, particularly in the cases of the wage-earning women, what they primarily seemed concerned with was the acquisition of missing wages, signalling a normality of such violence in southern Reconstruction society. Overall, all of the above cases reveal that whether it was behind closed doors or in public areas, African American women suffered at the hands of white men in white spaces.
[17] "Whipping of Phillis Ruffin, Harmon's Crossroads, North Carolina, February 14, 1867, artist's impression, further detail.," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/47588.
Notes
[1] Deborah Gray White, Ar'n't I a Woman? Female Slaves in the Plantation South (New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 1985), pp. 25-30.
[2] White, Ar'n't I a Woman?, pp. 41-42.
[3] Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863-1877 (New York: Harper Perennial, 2014), p. 165.
[4] Foner, Reconstruction, pp. 161-162.
[5] Loretta T. Johnson, “Charivari/Shivaree: A European Folk Ritual on the American Plains”, The Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Vol. 2, No. 3 (Winter, 1990), p. 378.
[6] Lisa Cardyn, “Sexualized Racism/Gendered Violence: Outraging the Body Politic in the
Reconstruction South”, Michigan Law Review, Vol. 100, No. 4 (Feb 2002), p. 677.
[7] Catherine Clinton, “Bloody Terrain: Freedwomen, Sexuality and Violence during Reconstruction”, The Georgia Historical Quarterly, Vol. 76, No. 2 (Summer 1992), p. 314.
[8] Letters to R.C. Ballard regarding slave woman abuse, J.M. Duffield to Col. R.C. Ballard (May 29, 1848).
[9] “Testimony by a South Carolina Freedwoman and her Employer, Cainhoy St Thomas
S.C.,Freedmen and Southern Society Project” (May 16, 1866 <http://www.freedmen.umd.edu/Carrion-Dutart.html>
[10] Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, & Abandoned Lands, “Narrative Reports of Criminal Cases Involving Freedmen, March, 1866 – Feb 1867”, National Archives, Microfilm, M1048, Roll 59, May 26, 1866.
[11] BRF&AL, ‘‘Narrative Reports of Criminal Cases Involving Freedmen, Mar. 1866 – Feb 1867’, National Archives, Microfilm, M1048, Roll 59, June 25, 1866.
[12] “Affidavit of a Kentucky Freedwoman, and a Tennessee Attorney to the Tennessee and Kentucky Freedmen’s Bureau Assistant Commissioner”, in Freedom, Series I, Volume I, The Destruction of Slavery, eds. Ira Berlin, Barbara J. Fields, Thavolia Glymph, Joseph P. Reidy, and Leslie S. Rowland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 654-656.
[13] Christopher M. Span, “Learning in Spite of Opposition: African Americans and their History of Educational Exclusion in Antebellum America”, Counterpoints, Vol. 131 (2005), pp. 27-28.
[14] Frank H. Goodyear III, “Photography changes the way we record and respond to social issues”. Smithsonian institution. Archived from the original. (May 1, 2013)
[15] “Whipping a N**** Girl in North Carolina by ‘Unconstructed’ Johnsonians” in Harper’s Weekly (Sept 14, 1867), see Figure 1.
[16] Gerald W. Thomas, “‘A Deed of Lawless and Inhuman Violence’: The Whipping of Phillis Ruffin”, Bertie County Archives (April 4, 2017 <http://files.usgwarchives.net/nc/bertie/history/other/ruffinph279gms.txt>
[17] "Whipping of Phillis Ruffin, Harmon's Crossroads, North Carolina, February 14, 1867, artist's impression, further detail.," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, http://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/47588.
Bibliography
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