What must it have been like to be introduced to a woman and then told after one forced experience, where your master observed you, that this was to be your wife? How did Sam and Louisa navigate that trauma and build a life together? By my calculations, Louisa, who was 90 at the time of the interview, would have been in her early to mid-20s when she and Sam were forced to have sex. I remember sitting in silence after reading Louisa’s words about her “wedding night.” What must it have been like to be told that you would reproduce with a man, under penalty of violence, for the purpose of creating additional income for your owner? To know that child was not being created to be loved, but to expand the budget line of the plantation. Other times, he would invite friends to watch them have forced intercourse, allowing his friends to rape young women as their husbands or lovers watched, unable to save them. The Everetts also recalled that Jim McClain would often force those he’d enslaved to have sex in his presence to assure they bred healthy offspring. He did this as a businessman and for his own sick pleasure. Jim McClain’s cruelness was not specific to the Everetts. After that we were considered man and wife.” Well, he told us what we must git busy and do in his presence, and we had to do it. “Master Jim called me and Sam ter him and ordered Sam to pull off his shirt-that was all the McClain niggers wore -and he said to me: Nor, ‘ do you think you can stand this big nigger?’ He had that old bull whip flung acrost his shoulder and Lawd, that man could hit so hard! So I jes said ‘yassure, I guess so,’ and tried to hide my face so I couldn’t see Sam’s nakedness, but he made me look at him anyhow. Now permanently housed in the Library of Congress, Louisa’s recollection of her wedding night is something out of a horror story: The goal was to collect as many firsthand accounts as possible from those who were formerly enslaved. In 1936, the two were interviewed in Mulberry, Florida, by Pearl Randolph as part of the Negro Writers Unit. The topic of sexual violence is often left out of the history of chattel slavery.
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Sam and Louisa were brought together by their owner “Big Jim” McClain to reproduce.
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There was no dancing, deep kisses, or smiling family members. Louisa, on her wedding day, did not wear a white dress with flowers decorating her hair.
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Sam and Louisa Everett did not have a beautiful floral June wedding. It reminds me of Sam, Louisa, Ann, Henrietta, and Florence, who refused to let their trauma die in silence. However, the flag makes me think of something else: violence-sexual violence, in particular. Supporters of the Confederate battle flag love to argue that the flag stands for rebellion, and that flying the flag is not “about slavery,” but about the pride of being from the South. Navy and Marine’s decision to ban the Confederate flag because those are three fewer places where a flag that represents systematic torture is flown. As a Black woman born in Louisiana, I was elated by NASCAR’s and the U.S.