Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans
Author: Emily A. Owens
Publisher: UNC Press, 2023. 244 pages.
Reviewer: Brianne Posey | June 2023
In August 1619, a British ship landed near Jamestown, Virginia, with dozens of kidnapped Africans. While there were no formal slavery laws in place, they quickly became disenfranchised. Chattel slavery, as it is often referred to, was a gendered organization wherein African men were exploited for physical labor, and African women were exploited for physical and sexual labor. The gendering of slavery forced Black women to find their own ways of rebellion to survive the horrors of the Plantation South.
In her book, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans, Dr. Emily Owens analyzes the sexual relations between enslaved Black women and White men. Drawing from gender, race, and class perspectives, this work reassesses narrow dichotomies of consent and coercion–shedding new light on the experiences of Black women in the Antebellum South. It is noted that the Louisiana State Supreme Court offered little protection for Black populations. For women, this legislation demonstrated the vastly different legal and social resources available to those fleeing sexual slavery. Thus, Owens chronicles the intellectual perseverance of Black women as they navigated a system wherein sexual violence was naturalized and culturally reproduced.
The introduction begins with the story of Eliza’s Last Child. As depicted in Solomon Northup’s Twelve Years a Slave, Eliza, a slave, is the mother of Emily. While residing in New Orleans, Emily remained unseen for most of her childhood. This changes during her teenage years when slave trader Theophilus Freeman notices her and remarks that she is an “extra handsome, fancy piece.” Emily Owens, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans 11 (2023). This statement implies that she will likely be trafficked into the Fancy Trade. The Fancy Trade rose to prominence during the plight of slave breeding. It would specifically target young interracial girls (often the daughters of enslaved Black women and White men) for sexual exploitation purposes. Owens reports that she found no trace of Emily’s existence beyond Northup’s mention; however, this narrative mirrors the experiences of many Black women who were shuffled around for White patriarchal amusement. These women include Delphine, Carmèlite, Ann Maria, and Alexina.
Delphine. Delphine’s journey from Haiti to New Orleans began when she was five years old. While slavery had been abolished in Haiti a few years prior, her slave status would be reinstated under the United States’ racial hierarchical system. In her early years, she would perform duties as a domestique, seamstress, cook, and housekeeper to bachelors and widows. As she matured, she would be thrust into sexual labor, which was not an explicit requirement in her slave ledger, but rather an expected condition of her lease.
In adulthood, Delphine was purchased by a wealthy doctor named Raymond Deveze. Owens notes that Delphine, like many Black women in similar positions, attempted to remain loyal to Deveze. Remaining loyal accompanied enduring ‘open’ concubinage to slave owners and their business associates. As Jennings points out, slave loyalty offered compensations such as better-quality housing and food. And through this system, Black women assumed conformity in pursuing security and survival. Thelma Jennings, “Us Colored Women Had to Go Through a Plenty”: Sexual Exploitation of African-American Slave Women, 1 J. Women’s Hist. 45, 45-74 (1990).
In actuality, the system of loyalty did not protect Black women from severe and acute violence. Delphine’s experiences included frequent violent beatings from Deveze, resulting in abrasions, broken bones, and sexual mutilation. These experiences prove that loyalty was a system that disproportionately suited slave owners.
When attempting to flee this abuse, Delphine encountered many obstacles, including a legal system that refused to prosecute force against slaves unless it harmed White interests. Like the religious proverb spare the rod and spoil the child, legal systems viewed violence as necessary to prevent slave rebellion. This precedent placed the burden of proof on enslaved women to prove that their experienced violence exceeded societal expectations.
Delphine brought her case to the New Orleans Parish court after one particularly harsh beating. Proving that her experiences were both ‘cruel’ and ‘ordinary violence,’ she won her case and was declared ‘Forever Free.’ Owens further denotes that Delphine gained her freedom through the support of another White man to whom she may have become indebted in the years following. This testament signifies the fragility of Black women’s bodies under racial capitalism.
Carmèlite. Carmèlite had a bound contract with a man named Françoise Doubrere. It was presumed that her contract would end after seven years, and she would be granted freedom. However, after the discharge of her contract, she was sold to another man, Jean Lacaze, who owned a brothel. Consequently, Carmèlite attempted to sue for her freedom.
Carmèlite’s confinement differed from other non-White women’s confinement during this time. For example, she experienced a broader sense of mobility, including managing Lacaze’s business ventures while he was in Paris. But even with mobility, she still lacked the legal, financial, and sexual rights to her labor. This discussion is similar to Farida D’s thesis on the difference between being sexual and being sexualized. Farida D., Rants of a Rebel Arab Feminist (2018). Farida D argues that being sexual implies autonomy over one’s body, sexual experiences, and pleasure, while being sexualized implies a lack of sexual agency, making inhumanity and sexual violence justifiable. As women in Carmèlite’s position could engage in contracts (sales) as prostitutes and concubines and collect profits, they are often imagined as ‘selling themselves.’ Owens refutes this, pointing out that these women were collecting fees on their proprietor’s behalf, and thus they were sexualized, not sexual, women.
In this section, Owens additionally explores Black women’s experiences of debt bondage. Debt bondage is a system where individuals work for no or minimum wages to repay advanced wages or fulfill a contracted amount. Owens deduces that debt bondage may have appealed to some Black women, providing hope for eventual freedom. However, Black women were severely exploited through debt bondage and ‘interest fees,’ as their labor typically exceeded the amount owed. These experiences are excluded from many slave narratives, as contract-bound women are often labeled indentured servants. Nevertheless, Owens concludes that the number of free Black females engaged in prostitution, or concubinage, especially in New Orleans, was relatively small, meaning that most contract-bound women were still enslaved. It is later revealed that Carmèlite’s lawsuit was unsuccessful and that she did not gain her freedom.
Ann Maria. Ann Maria arrived in Ohio with ‘free papers’ in 1839. She would soon return to New Orleans to George Ann Botts, her former owner, where she would remain until his death almost twenty years later. While many would argue that Ann Maria chose to remain a sexual consort to Botts, Owens takes a different perspective.
Regardless of freedom status, Black women were barred from participating in various facets of society. By remaining with White owners, Black women were allowed access to privileges derived from their status. This includes shelter, access to education, and partial control of domestic labor decisions. This is known as transactional sexual labor.
Women involved in transactional sexual labor are often referred to as mistresses. Owens challenges this labeling, alleging that the term mistress implies consent. Accordingly, she compares Ann Maria and Sarah ‘Sally’ Hemings, an enslaved woman who bore multiple children by former President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson. Owens argues that Ann Maria and Sally, a) were legally property and, thus, lacked total autonomy, and b) even without physical force, their owners were still sexually predatory.
Owens additionally points to the limiting nature of transactional sexual labor, as these women would never reach the potential of ‘woman of the house.’ These observations are similar to Jennings, who acknowledged that long-term concubinage rarely equated to social and legal marriage. Thelma Jennings, “Us Colored Women Had to Go Through a Plenty”: Sexual Exploitation of African-American Slave Women, 1 J. Women’s Hist. 45, 45-74 (1990). These dynamics created a soft-pedaled approach to sexual violence rooted in Black women’s fear of destitution.
Alexina. Alexina was born into slavery and sold three times before arriving in New Orleans. Following her arrival, she attempted to secure her freedom on the precedent of appearance. She argued that although born to a Black mother with blonde hair and blue eyes, she was legally White. Her case would spark a debate on whether one could be “Black enough to be a slave.” Emily Owens, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans 120 (2023).
Alexina became the image of the Quadroon, or rather a racially ambiguous feminine body. Quadroons’ White appearance gave them access to spaces forbidden to darker-skinned slaves; however, they were still targeted for sexual exploitation. Painted as erotic mythical creatures, they represented a source of sexual power, or rather, a collector’s piece for White men. With that being said, the irony is that although embodying sexual power, they possessed none of it themselves. Indeed, Alexina’s fate would remain controlled by White men, including the slave owners fighting for her possession and the lawyers fighting for her freedom.
As Alexina’s trial began, medical professionals debated her race. Many professionals reduced her to a biological ‘racial tragedy’ and a ‘White slave.’ Others would conduct sexually intrusive ‘exams’ of her breasts and genitalia, searching for intimate racial differences between her and ‘pure’ White women.
Enslaving Alexina meant that legal institutions would have to confront the notion, “could slaveholders accidentally enslave their most prized possession, White women?” Id. at 144. This caused great moral outrage, as White women were considered ineligible for physical and sexual slavery. Moreover, this legal case acknowledged intergenerational sexual violence and the disempowerment structure that brought Alexina into existence. Accordingly, Owens notes that Alexina’s fetishized body was not a problem for White Supremacy but rather an outcome of rampant sexual trauma in the Antebellum South.
It is revealed that Alexina’s first trial ended in a mistrial. The juries in the second and third trials declared her as White. A fourth trial was pursued but rendered void following the Civil War and the eventual collapse of the Confederacy in Southern territories.
Owens constructs a thought-provoking analysis of agency and lack thereof. The strengths of this work lie in the author’s ability to capture four distinct narratives that fall outside of more well-known slave experiences, unpacking the complexities of sex and violence in the process. This work also outlines how race, class, and biological sex shaped these four women’s lives. The afterward of this book is particularly useful as it links Delphine, Carmèlite, Ann Maria, and Alexina’s experiences to contemporary discussions of consent, rape, and reproductive rights. Indeed, while the chattel slavery system was upended upon the passing of the 13th Amendment, Black women continue to encounter hyper-sexualization and a legal system that neglects them. Ultimately, this historical narrative provides a context for exposing the various ways that Black women are still enslaved. Echoing Barbara Smith’s sentiments and the Black feminist visionaries of the Combahee River Collective, “until Black women are free, none of us will be free,” as the emancipation of Black women destroys all other systems of oppression. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free, New Yorker (July 20, 2020), https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/until-black-women-are-free-none-of-us-will-be-free.
Overall, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans is a powerful text that provides much-needed insight into the lives of Blacks in the Antebellum South. Furthermore, while not centering on thinly veiled discussions of ‘who had it worse,’ Owens navigates readers through the umbrella of Colonial sexual violence experienced by Black women. Her efforts to advance discussions of intersectionality and sexual agency are pertinent to the areas of critical criminology, Black feminism, and justice studies.
References:
Emily Owens, Consent in the Presence of Force: Sexual Violence and Black Women’s Survival in Antebellum New Orleans (2023)
Farida D., Rants of a Rebel Arab Feminist (2018)
Thelma Jennings, “Us Colored Women Had to Go Through a Plenty”: Sexual Exploitation of African-American Slave Women, 1 J. Women’s Hist. 45, 45-74 (1990)
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Until Black Women Are Free, None of Us Will Be Free, New Yorker (July 20, 2020), https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/until-black-women-are-free-none-of-us-will-be-free
Brianne M. Posey is an assistant faculty member in the Criminology and Justice Studies Department at California State University, Northridge.
