Sexual Tyranny of Slavery, As Book Report

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After being charged with the crime, a slave-owner yet eloquent prominent trial attorney James Jameson was appointed to defend Celia, partially to silence critics on both sides of the issue in Missouri. Jameson defended his client's right to resist her master's advances based upon statues designed only to apply to assaulted white women and another statute that allowed slaves to fight back with deadly force to spare their own lives. The judge objected to this defense and told the jury to ignore this argument, effectively sealing Celia's fate to be executed. Because Celia was regarded as property, her master could dispose of her as he desired, and the only sexual crime that could be committed against the body of a female slave under the law was if another man trespassed upon the slave-owners' property.

The unique tyranny forced upon women as a result of slavery is manifest in Celia's case. Not even George seemed to understand it. As Melton Mclaurin points out, it is unclear how Celia could have possibly resisted her master's advances, despite George's demands. George asked her to make their master stop, but did not offer her any assistance. George expected her loyalty, as his lover, but because of the nature of Celia's position she could not give this to him, no matter how much she wished to do so. She wanted to be a good woman and fulfill the common cultural ideal of being a good wife and mother, but her position as her master's plaything prohibited her from marriage and a conventional, monogamous relationship of choice, which was the right of all white women.

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The law extended white women protection, but not Celia, and she had no man to defend her. Her actions were desperate and murderous, but understandable in the eyes of most and had she been white the law would have protected rather than executed her. There was widespread acknowledgment of the commonness of rape amongst white masters but society still refused to treat slaves as 'equals' even though masters were clearly capable of being equally attracted to black women as they were to white women.

Even though Jameson was widely respected within the legal profession, Celia had no advocate who could truly understand and articulate the horror of being forced to live in sexual bondage since adolescence. As with all slaves, and as reflected in the judge's instructions to the jury, the system was 'stacked' against her, as an African-American and as a woman. Had she been an African-American in bondage, at least she would not have been placed in sexual slavery; had she been a white woman who was raped, the law would have defended her. However, Celia suffered double discrimination, socially and legally, which resulted in her execution.

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