A01=Tamika Y. Nunley
American slavery
Author_Tamika Y. Nunley
Category=NHK
Category=NHT
Category=NHTS
crime and punishment
enslaved women and girls
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
executive clemency
justice
race and criminalization
race and slavery
reproductive lives of Black women
slave resistance
slavery and medicine
slavery in early Virginia
the intellectual lives of enslaved women
violence as resistance
Product details
- ISBN 9781469673127
- Weight: 272g
- Dimensions: 155 x 233mm
- Publication Date: 04 Apr 2023
- Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Award-winning historian Tamika Y. Nunley has unearthed the stories of enslaved Black women charged by their owners with poisoning, theft, murder, infanticide, and arson. While free Black and white people accused of capital crimes received a hearing, trial, and, if convicted, an opportunity to appeal, none of these options were available to enslaved people. Conviction was final, and only the state or owners could spare their accused chattel of punishment by death. For enslaved women in Virginia, clemency was not uncommon, but Nunley shows why this act ultimately benefitted owners and punished the accused with a fate worse than death: perpetual bondage.
Demonstrating how crimes, convictions, and clemency functioned within a slave society that upheld the property interests of white Virginians, Nunley reveals the frequency with which owners preferred to keep the accused in bondage, which allowed them, behind the veil of paternalism, to continue to benefit from Black women's labor. This so-called clemency also sought to rob Black women of the power they exercised when they committed capital crimes. The testimonies that Nunley has collected and analyzed offer compelling glimpses of the self-identities forged by Black women as they attempted to resist enslavement and the limits of justice available to them in the antebellum courtroom.
Demonstrating how crimes, convictions, and clemency functioned within a slave society that upheld the property interests of white Virginians, Nunley reveals the frequency with which owners preferred to keep the accused in bondage, which allowed them, behind the veil of paternalism, to continue to benefit from Black women's labor. This so-called clemency also sought to rob Black women of the power they exercised when they committed capital crimes. The testimonies that Nunley has collected and analyzed offer compelling glimpses of the self-identities forged by Black women as they attempted to resist enslavement and the limits of justice available to them in the antebellum courtroom.
Tamika Y. Nunley is associate professor of history at Cornell University.
