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 sale outside of the state as the best possible
outcome.
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.