Notorious in the Neighborhood: Sex and Families across the Color Line in Virginia, 1787-1861Univ of North Carolina Press, 2003 M12 4 - 358 pages Laws and cultural norms militated against interracial sex in Virginia before the Civil War, and yet it was ubiquitous in cities, towns, and plantation communities throughout the state. In Notorious in the Neighborhood, Joshua Rothman examines the full spectrum of interracial sexual relationships under slavery--from Thomas Jefferson, Sally Hemings, and the intertwined interracial families of Monticello and Charlottesville to commercial sex in Richmond, the routinized sexual exploitation of enslaved women, and adultery across the color line. He explores the complex considerations of legal and judicial authorities who handled cases involving illicit sex and describes how the customary toleration of sex across the color line both supported and undermined racism and slavery in the early national and antebellum South. White Virginians allowed for an astonishing degree of flexibility and fluidity within a seemingly rigid system of race and interracial relations, Rothman argues, and the relationship between law and custom regarding racial intermixture was always shifting. As a consequence, even as whites never questioned their own racial supremacy, the meaning and significance of racial boundaries, racial hierarchy, and ultimately of race itself always stood on unstable ground--a reality that whites understood and about which they demonstrated increasing anxiety as the nation's sectional crisis intensified. |
Contents
1 | |
Chapter 1 Thomas Jefferson Sally Hemings James Callender and Sex across the Color Line under Slavery | 14 |
An Interracial Family in Early National and Antebellum Virginia | 57 |
Sex and Race on the Streets of Richmond | 92 |
Sexual Violence Slave Crime Law and the White Community | 133 |
Interracial Adultery and Divorce | 169 |
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adultery African Americans Albemarle County Albemarle County Deed ancestry Angela Barnett antebellum antebellum period argued Barnett believed blacks and whites brother Callender Callender’s Carlton Charlottesville Chesterfield County city’s claimed color line County Deed Book couple’s crime David Isaacs divorce early national enslaved women Francis free black governor Harrison Hays Isaacs Hays’s Henrico County Hodes husband Hustings Court Hyden interracial sex interracial sexual Isaacs’s James Jefferson-Hemings John Jones King George County knew legislators legislature lived LP-LOV Lucy Madison Hemings Manuel marriage married Martha Mary mayor MCPD Monticello mulatto murder Nancy West national and antebellum never Patrick Peggy petition petitioners police prostitutes racial Richmond Daily Dispatch Richmond Recorder Sally Hemings Sally Hemings’s sexual relationship slavery social South Southern story Street testified Thomas Jefferson Thomas Jefferson Randolph tion West’s white community white Virginians white women whites and blacks wife William Winn woman named wrote