Chattel slavery involved pervasive sexual violence, including the systematic sexual exploitation and sadistic abuse of enslaved children. Classified ads from nineteenth-century newspapers show buyers seeking young girls for sexual use, demonstrating perpetrators' impunity and lack of shame. Museums, monuments, and history courses often downplay or omit the sexual horrors of slavery, producing a misleading impression that slavery was merely unpaid labor. The Smithsonian was ordered to review and revise exhibit language criticized as 'divisive or ideologically driven.' Involuntary, unpaid prison labor continues, but the sexualized domination of chattel slavery was uniquely brutal.
It's time that we finally speak clearly and plainly: Slavery was not only unpaid labor. It was horrific sexual violence-violence far beyond anything most of us have been taught in school, and far beyond what is depicted in our national museums. For example, in classified ads published in 19th-century newspapers, we find strong evidence for sadistic abuse targeting enslaved children. The perpetrators of this violence acted with total impunity and clearly felt no shame for what they did.
A white resident of Washington, DC, took out the following classified ad on the front page of The Daily National Intelligencer in February 1835: "A GENTLEMAN residing in this city," he boldly declared, "wishes to purchase for his own use, a negro Girl, slave for life, from 12 to 16 years of age, active, intelligent, healthy." He added: "Any person having such a one to sell, will hear of a purchaser willing to give a good price in cash."
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