Thomas A. Foster - Rethinking Rufus: Sexual Violations of Enslaved Men

Rethinking Rufus

SERIES EDITORS

Daina Ramey Berry, University of Texas at Austin

Jennifer L. Morgan, New York University

ADVISORY BOARD

Edward E. Baptist, Cornell University

Kristen Block, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Sherwin Bryant, Northwestern University

Camilla Cowling, University of Warwick

Aisha Finch, University of California, Los Angeles

Marisa J. Fuentes, Rutgers University

Leslie M. Harris, Northwestern University

Tera Hunter, Princeton University

Wilma King, University of Missouri

Barbara Krauthamer, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Tiya Miles, University of Michigan

Melanie Newton, University of Toronto

Rachel OToole, University of California, Irvine

Diana Paton, Newcastle University

Adam Rothman, Georgetown University

Brenda E. Stevenson, University of California, Los Angeles

SEXUAL VIOLATIONS OF ENSLAVED MEN

Thomas A. Foster

2019 by the University of Georgia Press
Athens, Georgia 30602
www.ugapress.org
All rights reserved
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Foster, Thomas A., author.

Title: Rethinking Rufus : sexual violations of enslaved men / Thomas A. Foster.

Other titles: Sexual violations of enslaved men

Description: Athens, Georgia : University of Georgia Press, [2019] | Series: Gender and slavery ; 2 | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2018049578| ISBN 9780820355214 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780820355221 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780820355207 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: SlavesAbuse ofUnited StatesHistory. | SlavesUnited StatesSexual behaviorHistory. | SlavesFamily relationshipsSouthern StatesHistory19th century. | Male sexual abuse victimsUnited StatesHistory19th century. | Male rape victimsUnited StatesHistory19th century. | Male rapeUnited StatesHistory19th century. | Slave tradeUnited StatesHistory. | SlaveholdersUnited StatesSexual behaviorHistory. | Plantation lifeSouthern StatesHistory19th century.

Classification: LCC E443 .F675 2019 | DDC 306.3/620973dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018049578

For Marlon

INTRODUCTION
The Rape of Rufus?

Sexual Violence against Enslaved Men

CHAPTER 1
Remarkably Muscular and Well Made or Covered with Ulcers

Enslaved Black Mens Bodies

CHAPTER 2
No Man Can Be Prevented from Visiting His Wife

Manly Autonomy and Intimacy

CHAPTER 3
Just Like Raising Stock and Mating It

Coerced Reproduction

CHAPTER 4
Frequently Heard Her Threaten to Sell Him

Relations between White Women and Enslaved Black Men

CHAPTER 5
Till I Had Mastered Every Part

Valets, Vulnerability, and Same-Gender Relations under Slavery

CONCLUSION
Rethinking Rufus

APPENDIX
Full Text of wpa Interview with Rose Williams

I first became acutely aware of the gendered gap in our understanding of sexualized violence under slavery in my history of sexuality course at DePaul University. It was with those undergraduate students and repeated discussions of the interview with Rose Williams and the existing scholarship on the sexual assault of enslaved women that I began to suspect that we were not thinking about the complete storyand that the interview might also be able to help us ponder Rufuss experiences. That I studied the topic at all is largely due to conversations with Marlon Henry in which he expressed his belief that enslaved men were exploited and assaulted by enslavers. His conceptualization of the sexual violence of slavery was not represented in the extant scholarly literature and derived from his understanding of slavery and human nature. I decided to see if contemporary fictionalized instances of sexual violence against enslaved men could be found in historical accounts.

My research was initially published as an exploratory article in a special issue for the Journal of the History of Sexuality, edited by Ramn Gutirrez. I am indebted to Ramn and the participants of the conference related to that special issue for their suggestions on that essay. That article would not have become a book had it not been for the encouragement of Daina Berry and participants in two related conferences, Sexuality and Slavery: Exposing the History of Enslaved People in the Americas (University of Texas at Austin, 2011) and Working Group on Slavery and Freedom (Humanities Institute, CUNY Graduate Center, 2012). It was in those forums that I first became motivated to attempt to expand the initial article.

I could never have managed to handle the administrative duties as a department chair and continued to make progress on this book without the support of research assistants. They kept the project moving along even when I could not turn to it on a daily basis. I am indebted to the careful and dogged research over the years of a small army of undergraduate and graduate students at De-Paul University, including Felipe Agudelo, Callie Bretthauer, Nathan Christensen, Ramiro Hernandez, Scott Jones, Kristen Masterson, and Kasia Szymanska. Daina Berrys graduate students, Nakia Nikki Parker and Signe Peterson Fourmy, tracked down what little we could find in records about Rufus in Texas after emancipation.

A number of historians gave freely of their time to share feedback on earlier drafts of chapters or to share relevant archival cases, including Sharon Block, Trevor Burnard, Frances M. Clarke, Jim Downs, Marisa Fuentes, Leslie Harris, Martha Hodes, Vanessa Holden, Jessica M. Johnson, Jen Manion, Seth Rock-man, Joshua D. Rothman, Honor Sachs, John Saillant, James Schuelke, Loren Schweninger, David Shields, Terry Snyder, Christine Walker, Emily West, Lisa Ze Winters, and Betty Wood. I would also like to thank the talented staff at the University of Georgia Press, the anonymous external reviewers, and the editors for the series Gender and Slavery, Daina Berry and Jennifer Morgan.

I am also thankful for the very helpful staff at the History Society of Pennsylvania, the Kentucky State Archives, the Library of Congress, the Library of Virginia, the National Archives, the New York Public Library, and the North Carolina State Archives. Im also grateful for the speed with which various permission holders processed rights to use their images and for high-resolution files (see individual images for details).