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Race, Crime and Punishment: Slavery Era

The institution of slavery predates the founding of the United States. It began in 1619 with a small group of Africans brought to the American colony of Virginia and ended in 1865 resulting in millions of African Americans being freed by the Thirteenth Amendment. The United States is a country where people of African descent were considered as legal property, as machines, and as a source of labor. In order for this ideology to be sustained, Blackness had to be seen as a marker for savagery, criminality, and inhumanity.

To begin with, legal matters concerning African Americans were established to control Black behavior rather than protect Black bodies. Federal laws, as well as state laws, were dedicated to defining the status of African Americans and determining the rights of white slave owners (“Slavery in the U.S.”). The implementation of slave codes were designed to maintain the social order of which a racial hierarchy determined the supposed superiority of one group and the inferiority of others. In doing so, slave codes also legitimized the concept of chattel slavery. Slave codes “placed harsh restrictions on slaves’ already limited freedoms” while also giving “slave owners absolute power over their slaves” (“Slavery in the U.S.”). Enslaved Africans could be bought, sold, rented out, prostituted, and inherited as their master saw fit.

Slave codes were laws in each U.S. state defining the status of slaves and the rights of their owners and giving slave owners absolute power over their slaves.

A slave sale receipt. Dated January 20th 1840

Criminality of the slave master towards their slave was legally acceptable by the law insomuch that the murder of a slave that “resulted from violence administered for the purpose of subduing resistance or imposing discipline” was legally protected (Kennedy 1997, 30). Inflicting violence upon Blacks became a means for the white population to force Black people into submission and we can still see this phenomenon in today’s American society.

“The power of the master must be absolute, to render the submission of the slave perfect.” Thomas Ruffin, North Carolina Supreme Court

Likewise, the rape and sexual abuse of which Black women were subjected to by white men went unrecognized by the law as a criminal offense. Stereotypes about Black women as “lustful, promiscuous ‘jezebels’” were created to absolve white men’s sexual violence towards enslaved and free Black women and girls (“Slavery in the U.S.”).

For more information:

Kennedy, Randall. Race Crime and the Law. Vintage Books, 1997.

“Slavery in the U.S.” lumenlearning, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-ushistory/chapter/slavery-in-the-u-s/. Accessed May 2, 2018.

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