[Please be advised that this is very traumatic information to read & must have been hell to experience.]

There is an inextricable connection between power, control, and privilege. It is often difficult for people to wrap their heads around these concepts individually, let alone to understand them as intersecting. After the George Zimmerman verdict, there’s been a lot of talk about the continuing salience of racism in American culture. It’s been shocking though how decontextualized from actual history some of the discussion has been. Racism is of course woven through all of our structures. It has always been so and continues today. Racism (like other forms of oppression) is held together through violence which helps to maintain unequal relationships.

It’s useful, I think, to focus on specific examples from history to make these ideas more concrete. I’m reading an absolutely harrowing book by Geo W. Carleton titled “The Suppressed Book About Slavery.” I came across a story that is seared in my mind. It illustrates that slaveowners didn’t respect the bonds of marriage between enslaved people. It shows how slave women were always at risk of sexual violence. One also gets an up-close account of the brutality of slavery which is often obscured in our sanitized re-tellings of history. Most importantly, the story underscores that American racism was a series of ACTIONS that sought to purposely subjugate & sublimate an entire class of people over hundreds of years. Many of these actions deliberately engendered black pain and suffering. Any discussions of the current role of race & racism in the country that don’t take these realities into account are not worth having.

A Slaveholder, named Richard Dudley, having been “refused” by a young Slave-“wife,” and being urged thereto by her Slave-“husband,” ordered two stakes or posts to be driven deep into the earth in his barn-yard. Two of the strongest Slaves on the plantation were compelled to perform this task. When the stakes were well driven, he commanded George and Caroline, “man and wife,” to be tied fast, one to each stake. The stakes were about five feet apart and six feet high. The victims had their hands tied together fast to the top of the post, so that they stood on tip-toe, and their feet were tied fast to the stake just above the ground. In this way their bodies were exposed to the keen lash of the whipper, a poor white vagabond, called Robinson. The barn-yard was filled with sad and unwilling spectators of the infamous scene; some slowly sauntering about, others looking gloomily on, and others still turning their faces away. While the preparations were being made for the execution of the sentence, the Slaveholder continued to curse and upbraid Caroline with her obstinacy and disobedience in not acceding to his lustful desires. “I’ll put an end to your fun,” said he; “I’ll make it a dear job for you both,” he continued.

Meanwhile, poor Caroline was overcome with terror. Every now and then her unhappy “husband” would address her, in an undertone, in words of consolation and encouragement; but he dared not so speak as to be heard by his “Master,” else his sympathy would but excite his rage still more. Caroline — who was as white and good-looking as any “Woman in the State —was strung up high against the post, with her back to the whipper. Her chemise, a light cotton one, afforded no protection to the heavy blows of the whip. “Begin now!” shouted the Slaveholder, while he stood back some yards, placing his arms akimbo, and leisurely taking a survey of the scene. Robinson stepped up, took his stand at the requisite distance from his victims, raised his whip, swung the long and heavy lash scientifically around him several times, and brought it down with such force upon the back of poor Caroline, that it seemed to jar and shatter her whole frame. Instantly the blow extorted from her a loud and long scream of agony, which rent the air, and appalled every listener; and she writhed in intense pain. But Robinson was well used to such things. Her awful scream did not engross his attention for an instant, and he returned to repeat the exploit upon the more vigorous frame of his other victim. He cut and carved his broad back and shoulders scientifically, and exerted his utmost strength to make the blow tell upon him. George did not move. Yet he could not but utter one deep groan of suffering, forced from him by the pain which the blow inflicted. Next came Caroline’s turn. The same blow, and the same scream, so heart-rending and affecting, were repeated. But Robinson paused not in his work. He had no time to lose. It would be night before his task was ended, and he had to hurry himself. Fast and thick the blows fell upon the two young Slaves. George gave but little proof of his sufferings. Caroline, long before a hundred blows had been dealt her, had ceased to scream, or to wail; but hung insensible by her hands to the post which sustained her lacerated body. And long before her “two hundred and fifty lashes” had been given, not only her chemise had been cut to pieces by the thong of Robinson’s whip, but her whole back was cut into deep gashes; blood flowed plentifully down her person, and every time the lash touched her body it sank deeply into the soft, mashed, and lacerated flesh.

Caroline had already ceased to feel. She was for a few moments beyond the power of her “Master’s” rage. She had fainted. By the Slaveholder’s orders she was untied from the stake, and several of the elder Slaves carried her insensible body back to the hut, where they left her to recover as best she might, as they were afraid to offer her any assistance, lest they themselves might excite the wrath of their “Master.” George still remained tied to the stake. He had yet one hundred and fifty blows to endure. As Robinson resumed his bloody task, the poor wretch could endure it no longer, and broke out into earnest supplication, “Oh, Master Richard, don’t, don’t whip me any more. I’m most gone!” said he, frantically. “Lay it on the scoundrel, lay it on,” Richard peremptorily commanded Robinson, who obeyed him with alacrity. The body of George was by this time covered with scars, and cuts, and welts. The blood flowed freely. His sobs and groans alternated with the heavy blows of Robinson’s whip. By the time his allotted four hundred lashes had been inflicted, the flesh hung in stripes from his bones. George, too, had fainted. His nature, strong and vigorous as it was, had sunk beneath the agony of that fierce struggle between fiendish wrath on the one hand, and enduring constancy on the other.

The four hundred lashes had been told, and Robinson’s execrable work was done. George’s body was covered with blood. The Slaveholder approached him and examined his wounds, while Robinson stepped back to sit down upon a log and rest himself. The Slaveholder seeing the loose flesh hanging in stripes from George’s lacerated back, took his jack-knife from his pocket, and amid the screams of his victim, just re-turning again to consciousness, cut off the stripes of flesh, and threw the pieces to the hogs in the barn-yard, which ate them with avidity. He then commanded George to be untied. The poor wretch fell immediately to the earth. He could not stand, and moaning in his great agony, he, too, was carried to his quarters among the Slave-huts (pp. 196-199).