Black Religion / Womanist Thought / Social Justice Series Editors Dwight N. Hopkins and Linda E. Thomas Published by Palgrave Macmillan “How Long this Road”: Race, Religion, and the Legacy of C. Eric Lincoln Edited by Alton B. Pollard, III and Love Henry Whelchel, Jr. African American Humanist Principles: Living and Thinking Like the Children of Nimrod By Anthony B. Pinn White Theology: Outing Supremacy in Modernity By James W. Perkinson The Myth of Ham in Nineteenth-Century American Christianity: Race, Heathens, and the People of God By Sylvester Johnson Loving the Body: Black Religious Studies and the Erotic Edited by Anthony B. Pinn and Dwight N. Hopkins Transformative Pastoral Leadership in the Black Church By Jeffery L. Tribble, Sr. Shamanism, Racism, and Hip Hop Culture: Essays on White Supremacy and Black Subversion By James W. Perkinson Women, Ethics, and Inequality in U.S. Healthcare: “To Count Among the Living” By Aana Marie Vigen Black Theology in Transatlantic Dialogue: Inside Looking Out, Outside Looking In By Anthony G. Reddie Womanist Ethics and the Cultural Production of Evil By Emilie M. Townes Whiteness and Morality: Pursuing Racial Justice through Reparations and Sovereignty By Jennifer Harvey Black Theology and Pedagogy By Noel Leo Erskine The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu By Johnny B. Hill Conceptions of God, Freedom, and Ethics in African American and Jewish Theology By Kurt Buhring The Origins of Black Humanism in America: Reverend Ethelred Brown and the Unitarian Church By Juan M. Floyd-Thomas Black Religion and the Imagination of Matter in the Atlantic World By James A. Noel Bible Witness in Black Churches By Garth Kasimu Baker-Fletcher Enslaved Women and the Art of Resistance in Antebellum America By Renee K. Harrison Ethical Complications of Lynching: Ida B. Wells’s Interrogation of American Terror By Angela D. Sims Representations of Homosexuality: Black Liberation Theology and Cultural Criticism By Roger A. Sneed The Tragic Vision of African American Religion By Matthew V. Johnson Beyond Slavery: Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies Edited by Bernadette J. Brooten with the editorial assistance of Jacqueline L. Hazelton Gifts of Virtue, Alice Walker, and Womanist Ethics By Melanie Harris Racism and the Image of God By Karen Teel (forthcoming) Self, Culture, and Others in Womanist Practical Theology By Phillis Isabella Sheppard (forthcoming) Women’s Spirituality and Education in the Black Church By Yolanda Y. Smith (forthcoming) Bernadette J. Brooten, editor Supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Love Between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Winner of the 1997 Lambda Literary Award in the Lesbian Studies Category. Winner of the 1997 Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Non-Fiction, sponsored by the Publishing Triangle. Winner of the 1997 American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion in the Historical Studies Category. Nominated for the 1996 National Book Award. Women Leaders in The Ancient Synagogue: Inscriptional Evidence and Background Issues. Brown Judaic Studies 36. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1982. Frauen in der Männerkirche? (coedited with Norbert Greinacher). Mainz: Grünewald; Munich: Kaiser, 1982. Numerous articles on Jewish and Christian women’s history in the Roman period. Beyond Slavery Overcoming Its Religious and Sexual Legacies Edited by Bernadette J. Brooten with the editorial assistance of Jacqueline L. Hazelton BEYOND SLAVERY Copyright © Bernadette J. Brooten, 2010. All rights reserved. First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978–0–230–10016–9 (hardcover) ISBN: 978–0–230–10017–6 (paperback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Beyond slavery : overcoming its religious and sexual legacies / edited by Bernadette J. Brooten; with the editorial assistance of Jacqueline L. Hazelton. p. cm.—(Black religion/womanist thought/social justice series) ISBN978–0–230–10016–9 1. Women slaves—United States—History. 2. Women—Sexual behavior—United States—History. 3. Slavery—Religious aspects I. Brooten, Bernadette J. II. Hazelton, Jacqueline L. E443.B45 2010 306.3Ј62082—dc22 2010001492 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: October 2010 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America. Contents Introduction 1 Bernadette J. Brooten Part I A Prayer 1. Prayer for my daughter (Poem) 33 Nancy Rawles Part II Overcoming Slavery’s Legacies in the United States 2. The Paradox of Silence and Display: Sexual Violation of Enslaved Women and Contemporary Contradictions in Black Female Sexuality 41 Dorothy Roberts 3. From Mammy to Welfare Queen: Images of Black Women in Public-Policy Formation 61 Emilie M. Townes 4. From Plantations to Prisons: African American Women Prisoners in the United States 75 Ellen M. Barry Part III Overcoming Slavery’s Legacies in Religious Law 5. The Purchase of His Money: Slavery and the Ethics of Jewish Marriage 91 Gail Labovitz 6. Slavery and Sexual Ethics in Islam 107 Kecia Ali Part IV Ancient Origins of the Problem 7. “She Shall Not Go Free as Male Slaves Do”: Developing Views About Slavery and Gender in the Laws of the Hebrew Bible 125 David P. Wright 8. Early Christianity, Slavery, and Women’s Bodies 143 Jennifer A. Glancy vi Contents 9. Gender, Slavery, and Technology: The Shaping of the Early Christian Moral Imagination 159 Sheila Briggs Part V Why Sexual Ethics Needs History 10. “As If She Were His Wife”: Slavery and Sexual Ethics in Late Medieval Spain 179 Debra Blumenthal 11. Love, Sex, Slavery, and Sally Hemings 191 Mia Bay 12. Breaking the Silence: Sexual Hypocrisies from Thomas Jefferson to Strom Thurmond 213 Catherine Clinton Part VI Should the Bible Form the Basis of Public Policy? 13. The Bible, Slavery, and the Problem of Authority 231 Sylvester A. Johnson 14. The “Purity of the White Woman, Not the Purity of the Negro Woman”: The Contemporary Legacies of Historical Laws Against Interracial Marriage 249 Fay Botham Part VII The Stories We Tell 15. Mammy’s Daughters; Or, the DNA of a Feminist Sexual Ethics 267 Frances Smith Foster Part VIII Restorative Justice 16. Enslaved Black Women: A Theology of Justice and Reparations 287 Dwight N. Hopkins Part IX A Meditation 17. A Visit from the Old Mistress (Oil on Canvas by Winslow Homer) (Poem) 307 Florence Ladd Epilogue 309 Mende Nazer, with Bernadette J. Brooten Notes on Contributors 319 Acknowledgments 325 Index 329 Introduction Bernadette J. Brooten I, too, live in the time of slavery, by which I mean I am living in the future created by it. —Saidiya Hartman1 This book invites and enables readers to engage with the history of slav- ery over centuries and across continents—in particular, with its effects on enslaved women and girls and past religious complicity in it.2 I hope that this new way of viewing slavery will motivate readers to create new strategies for overcoming the vestiges of slavery that continue to shape our daily lives in ways that are often difficult to see. Consider the following modern-day experiences: “As a descendant of African slave women,” writes Amina Wadud, a leading scholar of Islam who usually wears the Muslim headscarf in public, “I have car- ried the awareness that my ancestors were not given any choice to determine how much of their bodies would be exposed at the auction block or in their living conditions. So, I chose intentionally to cover my body as a means of reflecting my historical identity, personal dignity, and sexual integrity.3 When Doris Davis, an Orthodox Jewish teacher from Long Island, sought a divorce, her husband refused to write her a bill of divorcement (Hebrew: get). Without a get, the Orthodox Jewish community would not recognize her divorce, and she would not be allowed to remarry within the community. In 2004, she sought the help of the Organization for the Resolution of Agunot, which staged rallies outside the husband’s home and then posted his photo in synagogues in Brooklyn, where he lived. This community solidarity succeeded, and he eventually wrote her the get.4 In the summer of 2008, a group of young white women attended a bachelor- ette party on the West Coast. They hired a male stripper—blond, muscular, tattooed, dressed in a tight black swimsuit—and took turns playing with him, laughing at the raunchy fun. The stripper grabbed one woman by her hair, 2 Bernadette J. Brooten pushing her head down toward his groin. He grabbed another woman, pushed her down on all fours, and straddled her from behind as she laughed and he grinned at the camera. One of the women at the party, a devout Catholic who attends church with her adoring husband every Sunday, captured each moment of sexual play on her digital camera.5 How do these contemporary situations relate to the history of slavery? Each of these women’s stories began generations before they were born, when owning or dominating a human body was not only legal but morally permis- sible and codified by their religions. Slavery had a profound impact on Jewish, Christian, and Islamic thinking and laws about bodies, sex, and marriage, as well as property and ownership.