In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

6  “The Negroes Are No Longer Slaves” Free Black Families, Free Labor, and Racial Violence in Post-Emancipation Kentucky J. Michael Rhyne In the summer of 1866, Jennie Addison, age twelve and, along with her mother, employed by the wife of James C. Ford as domestic help, testified to anagentoftheFreedmen’sBureau,LouisvilleSub-district,thatMrs.Fordhad on several occasions ordered a male employee to beat her. During the worst of these beatings, the “man struck her 7 or 8 times with his fist saying that he was authorized by [Ford’s wife] to inflict the punishment.” The Freedmen’s Bureau, on which the federal government placed responsibility for helping Kentucky’s approximately 200,000 former slaves adjust to their new status, struggled to mitigate racial violence in the workplace and elsewhere. In this case, head of the household James C. Ford was ordered to appear before the Bureau to answer charges and cautioned to remember that “Negroes are no longer slaves and the law does not permit them to be beaten and abused in thismanner either bythe personshiringthemor byanypersonwho theymay also have employed.”1 Their violentnature notwithstanding,such casesof abuse typicallydidnot constituteasufficientlyseriousoffenseforfederalprosecutionintheoverburdened U.S. District Court in Louisville. In the months after the Thirteenth Amendment formally ended slavery in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, this often proved to be the court of last resort for Kentucky’s former slaves in their efforts to get a modicum of justice. Attempting to prosecute such cases in local or state courts was normally not an option, as most Kentucky judges strictly adhered to state law and thus deemed black testimony against white defendants inadmissible. The Freedmen’s Bureau, operating in the commonwealth from late 1865 through 1868, tried to intervene where possible, investi- Free Black Families, Free Labor, and Racial Violence in Post-Emancipation Kentucky 123 gating reports of murder, violent intimidation, and more, including cases that did not result in long-term or fatal injuries to the victims. Bureau superintendents , understanding the limits of legal recourse for freedpeople, established a system of fines to punish white perpetrators in cases such as Jennie Addison ’s. Despite such penalties, the transition to free labor that the Freedmen’s Bureau hoped to facilitate would face violent opposition from former slaveholders and stubborn white employers who, along with self-styled vigilantes, acted out their deep-seated notions of white supremacy with little reason to fear prosecution at local, state, or even federal levels.2 Former slaves in Kentucky, who made up a fifth of the state’s population, had little ability to assert their hard-won liberty in the first months and years after emancipation became law. Self-proclaimed “Negro Regulators” and other white supremacist bands imposed reigns of terror in many counties. In particular, families—sometimes with male heads of household, sometimes not—faced significant hurdles as they sought to establish autonomous lives. Regulators pillaged their homes, stole any valuables they had, often burned themout,andsometimesviolentlyabusedthem.Menreportedbeingdragged out of their homes, beaten, and on occasion stripped naked and whipped. A few reported being bound and forced to watch as Regulators raped a wife or daughter. Enough freedmen were murdered—sometimes merely shot in the head, other times tortured to death—to send a clear message that attempts by freedmen to resist these bands of Regulators likely would prove fatal.3 With at least tacit community support, bands of white supremacists sought to enact their agenda by attempting to demonstrate the inferiority of freedpeople. Certainly these assaults represented denial on the part of white men of the manhood that many black men publicly demonstrated during and after the Civil War and, thus, they represented a form of symbolic emasculation . At the same time, violence against black men and their families helped restore a sense of manhood to some white men who had lost status, that is to say, white men who felt emasculated as a result of either the defeat of the Confederacy or abolition of slavery, or both.4 Furthermore, violence against freedwomen and girls illustrated the extent to which many white Kentuckians regarded freedwomen as undeserving of the same basic courtesies and the same level of respect and protection accorded to white women in both public and private settings. As a result, free black women fell victim not only to white men who dealt them insults and beatings but also to perpetrators of rape. As Herbert Gutman phrased it, “Ex-slave husbands and fathers found it difficult to protect their wives and daughters from the conventional...

Share