Forsaking All Others: A True Story of Interracial Sex and Revenge in the 1880s South

3. In Search of Their Place

3 in search of their Place When it came to interracial coupling, post–Civil War Arkansas was much like the rest of the South. During the antebellum period, black-white liaisons usually involved white men and slave women. These affairs often operated beneath the public radar and, if known, were mostly ignored and/or tolerated by the larger white society.1 Few white men spoke openly of their interracial associations or openly acknowledged the biracial children they fathered. In those instances when white men recognized mixedraced offspring, they usually did so in wills. Such was the situation in Campbell v. Campbell (1845), an Arkansas case in which the collateral heirs of the deceased Duncan G. Campbell challenged his right to emancipate a slave girl named Viney and leave her a five-thousand-dollar legacy. In Campbell’s final testament, he revealed that Viney was his daughter by one of his slaves. Fortunately for Viney, the Arkansas high court upheld Campbell’s right to free her and impart the inheritance.2 In a similar Arkansas case, Moss v. Sandefur (1847), evidence suggested that the deceased James H. Dunn, a white Hempstead County merchant , had intended to manumit Eliza, his daughter from In Search of Their Place 38 a slave woman named Mourning. However, Eliza would not receive her freedom because Dunn had not specified such a provision in his will.3 The tendency of white men to hide their coupling with black women stemmed to a large extent from the negative attitudes that whites had toward people of African descent. During the seventeenth century, Europeans began making much of racial differences and the supposed inferiority of nonwhite peoples, describing Africans, along with other people of color, as “brutish,” “pagan,” and “uncivilized.” As part of this racial stereotyping, whites also gave sexualized labels to these groups. For Europeans, Africans were “savagely” sexual, with “hot and lascivious” carnal temperaments.4 As slavery took hold in the English colonies, the acceptance of stereotypes became more widespread. Consequently , white authorities developed a particular concern about interracial relationships. Along with regarding black-white coupling as repugnant to society, white leaders recognized two significant problems caused by such relationships. First, the children from interracial relationships blurred the lines of freedom in the colonies.5 If blacks were by the very nature of their color presumed slaves and whites were regarded as free, what status would their biracial children have? Second, the colonial patriarchy worried about black men having access to white women. In colonies with sparse numbers of white women, white men feared that allowing interracial relationships to go unregulated jeopardized their own access to white women.6 To deal with these problems, many colonial assemblies instituted antimiscegenation laws that typically banned In Search of Their Place 39 interracial marriage. Since whites could not legally marry blacks, whites could not fully convey their status on any children that came from sexual unions. In practice, because most sexual encounters occurred between white masters and slave women, antimiscegenation laws helped to ensure that most biracial children remained slaves. In those cases where black men and white women interacted sexually, other colonial legislation dictated that the offspring from these liaisons spend the first twenty years or more of their lives as servants.7 During the antebellum period, most southern states maintained their antimiscegenation statutes. By this time these provisions worked in conjunction with state adultery and fornication laws. Interracial couples who attempted to marry had their nuptials nullified by the state’s antimiscegenation edict. The state then charged them with unlawful cohabitation, adultery, or fornication. Although technically these mandates applied to all interracial couples, state authorities used them mostly against interracial relationships involving free black men and white women. Such enforcement reveals the special privileges of white males in the antebellum South and the veritable powerlessness of white women. As long as white men sustained their interracial liaisons in relative secrecy, they had little to fear from legal authorities.8 After the Civil War, the onset of Radical Reconstruction raised questions about the legitimacy of state antimiscegenation laws. Not only did federal and state judges deliberate on the lawfulness of the edicts, but state judges also grappled with the constitutionality of antimiscegenation laws. As a result, the state supreme courts in Texas and In Search of Their Place 40 Alabama severely weakened or voided the statutes.9 Other southern states—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Arkansas— either directly repealed the...