Vulgar History

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00:00:30.000 Hello, and welcome to Vulgar History of Feminist Women's History comedy podcast. My name is Anne

00:00:36.220 Foster, and today is an author interview I'm so excited about. I got to talk with Nikki M. Taylor,

00:00:42.260 who is a professor of history at Howard University. And her book, as soon as I saw the title of this

00:00:47.700 book, I was like, ooh, what's this? And then I got to read it. I was like, oh, I have to have her on

00:00:51.260 the podcast. So her book is a nonfiction book called Brooding Over Bloody Revenge, Enslaved

00:00:56.580 Women's Lethal Resistance. So this is a book about enslaved women in the United States

00:01:02.340 using lethal force, aka murder, as the ultimate form of resistance. In our conversation,

00:01:09.400 when I was talking with Nikki, she was talking about how this kind of fills a gap in the overall

00:01:14.160 research of just American history, of the history of enslaved people, because these women's stories

00:01:20.780 have not been shared to this extent before. She's looking at legal records just to see who these 0.95

00:01:27.600 women were, how they committed these murders, what the results were. So as part of the book's

00:01:32.840 description, I'll just read you what it says. Nikki M. Taylor expertly reveals how women killed

00:01:37.800 for deeply personal instances of injustice committed by their owners. The stories presented,

00:01:42.800 which spans centuries and legal contexts, demonstrate that these acts of lethal force 0.62

00:01:46.980 were carefully premeditated enslaved women planned how and when their enslavers would die

00:01:52.280 what weapons and accomplices were necessary and how to evade capture in the aftermath original

00:01:57.660 and compelling brooding over bloody revenge presents a window into the lives and philosophies

00:02:02.420 of enslaved women who had their own ideas about justice and how to achieve it it's an incredible

00:02:08.320 just the research that nikki has done is so fascinating the book is put together in this

00:02:14.360 really, I'm going to say, and we talked about this in the episode, she's written academic books

00:02:19.100 before, but this one is much more aimed at the average everyday reader. You don't need to have

00:02:23.700 studied history to read this book. It's very readable. It's almost, I would say like if you're

00:02:28.720 a fan of even true crime sorts of things, this might be your vibe. Anyway, it was such a

00:02:34.300 fascinating book. I was so thrilled to get to talk to her. So please enjoy this conversation

00:02:38.180 with Nikki M. Taylor. Okay, so I'm joined today by Nikki M. Taylor, who's the author of the new

00:02:47.120 book, Brooding Over Bloody Revenge, which first of all, is a fantastic title. And we'll talk about

00:02:52.980 that in a minute. But welcome, Nikki. Thank you, Anne. It's so good to be with you and all of your

00:02:59.140 listeners today. So my first question for you about your book is how did you, I don't know,

00:03:05.440 I guess my first question is just how did you come up with a concept to write this book?

00:03:09.840 Wow.

00:03:10.420 Yeah.

00:03:10.860 Well, as a student of history, I always wondered why, you know, my professors and authors said

00:03:18.640 that Black women didn't tend to resist, you know, using force. 1.00

00:03:23.920 And I said, well, I wonder why. 1.00

00:03:25.680 And the reasons they gave me never really made sense to me.

00:03:29.240 And in fact, as a black woman, it really made us seem a little bit more passive than reality would allow me to really absorb.

00:03:42.060 And so, you know, I started digging and started finding more and more and more stories.

00:03:48.380 And it just became, you know, just my life's mission to bring this to readers, these stories.

00:03:56.540 And how did you go about finding the like from legal trial records or what was your detective work like to try and find these women?

00:04:06.120 Yeah, they're very hard to find in the usual sources. And so I, yeah, most of these women are very visible, or I should say audible, you know, their voices are there in the records of these local courts, usually in a particular court called Oyer and Terminer.

00:04:27.160 And so I never knew about the existence of this particular court. And so finding all of these trial cases where the women actually speak was just fascinating, because if you know anything about Black women's history in the age of slavery, we have just very little information.

00:04:48.060 We are hard pressed to recover their words and the words that they left.

00:04:54.860 So they're right there in these trial records.

00:04:57.760 And so it was a goldmine for me as a historian of Black women's history.

00:05:02.680 The way that you've arranged the book, you kind of go sort of one person or one situation,

00:05:07.580 one case at a time.

00:05:09.380 But what unites all of them is a phrase that you use a lot in the book. 0.99

00:05:12.620 And I was hoping you could define that for everyone, which is the Black feminist practice 0.80

00:05:16.680 of justice. 0.99

00:05:17.300 Can you explain what you mean by that?

00:05:20.280 Yes, it's a new theory.

00:05:22.260 And basically, as a scholar that has benefited from Black feminist theories in my life and 0.99

00:05:30.360 in my career, I understood that in order to really amplify and make these women's lives

00:05:37.060 more visible, I couldn't be tied to traditional historical methods and traditional historical

00:05:45.060 interpretations.

00:05:46.000 because if you just look at these cases on the surface, Anne, you might conclude that these

00:05:51.980 women were just irate and they were just angry and they were just impulsive. And so by having this

00:05:59.520 other lens, you know, I was able to see them more clearly. And so what I mean by a Black feminist 0.93

00:06:05.160 practice of justice is derived from a Black feminist philosophy of justice. And so in order 0.77

00:06:13.480 to say that. I mean, you know, nobody ever talks about Black women as philosophers in the age of

00:06:19.180 slavery, but it's philosopher in a more organic sense of the word. But this philosophy insists

00:06:27.040 on fairness, decency, justness, and a basic expectation of humane treatment. It's rooted

00:06:37.160 in Black women's lived experiences. It prioritizes their perspective. And so it looks at history 0.93

00:06:44.420 through their eyes. It looks at the world through their eyes. It also appreciates intersectionality

00:06:51.860 that it's impossible to understand the worlds they live without understanding them, not only

00:06:58.180 as Black people, but as women and as women with a particular status, an enslaved status. So all of

00:07:06.440 those statuses, the race, gender, and enslavement, put them at a particular relationship to the

00:07:14.020 government, to white people, and even to Black men. And so I talk about that in the book. Black

00:07:20.340 feminist practice of justice also appreciates that at that time, the American justice system was 1.00

00:07:28.740 pretty unfair. And knowingly so, a lot of the judges and attorneys knew that it was unfair. 1.00

00:07:35.820 It was designed to be that way. There was a separate justice system for enslaved people.

00:07:41.800 In addition, this black feminist practice of justice really attributes rationality and forethought to these women's actions. 1.00

00:07:52.980 It wasn't just impulsive. And I demonstrate to the to the readers the amount of planning that went into these murders of their owners.

00:08:05.820 And I show in every case that it wasn't their first thing that they wanted to do.

00:08:12.480 They tried other means of resistance before, other means that failed.

00:08:17.740 And so this was their last best option to get some relief from the oppression or the

00:08:23.280 abuse or the indignity that they were suffering. 1.00

00:08:26.920 And the last element of the Black feminist practice of justice is that it kind of considers 1.00

00:08:34.260 this idea of proportionality, right? So some people, if they didn't understand Black feminist 1.00

00:08:41.600 theory, or they didn't understand this particular theory, they might say, oh, well, these women, 1.00

00:08:46.500 this is disproportionate to whatever injury their owner did to them. They killed these children. So 1.00

00:08:52.920 this is not fair. It's not just. And so I say that this theory considers complicity and privilege.

00:09:02.000 And so even white children had a level of privilege just by being the children of slave 0.55

00:09:10.100 holders that gave them a great deal of power over these women. 0.57

00:09:14.900 And so I just revealed, you know, all of that.

00:09:17.960 And that is how I derived this theory.

00:09:20.740 And so instead of looking at these women as the angry black woman trope that people might

00:09:26.480 be, you know, initially might think that this was. You just have to be more, you know, 0.61

00:09:32.700 intellectual and thoughtful about their circumstances, put yourself in their position,

00:09:37.660 and you'll arrive at a different conclusion about motivation.

00:09:43.220 Thank you so much for explaining that so well, because that's really the lens through which

00:09:46.820 the whole book is told. It doesn't read at all. It's not like a true crime book about,

00:09:50.780 oh, here's these women who kill these people. It's like, no, like you really looked at

00:09:53.620 their life and their situation what brought them to that point and why it was kind of

00:09:57.900 inevitable for that like all the so they tried you talk about the things that I think there's

00:10:03.900 some themes and several of the people you look at who tried thing before they ended up at murder

00:10:10.100 they tried to try to see if they could be sold to someone else they tried to see can you explain

00:10:15.240 the other things that they would have tried first yeah so they they tried what all of us

00:10:21.160 would try. If we're met with an oppressive boss, they try to skip out on work. They try to talk

00:10:28.960 back. They try to maybe absent themselves from work or, you know, lie about where they were,

00:10:36.540 particularly in the case of Rose Butler. They even tried, sometimes they tried physical assault

00:10:43.740 in the case of Lucy from Galveston, and sometimes they tried arson. Arson was a usual thing that

00:10:53.980 they tried before murder because they thought their minds were, well, if I burn everything down,

00:11:00.960 then my owner will be forced to sell me, and then I will get sold to a new owner, which is what they

00:11:07.020 wanted. These women, Anne, were not trying to end slavery, and I really, you know, stress that

00:11:12.500 in my book, they just wanted to end their owners. So they just wanted to get away from these abusive 0.51

00:11:19.760 owners. And so all of those things they tried first. And their last best option was was murder.

00:11:28.440 And they were fully aware of the consequences for that. It was not a surprise to any of them

00:11:33.580 that they would be executed if found out. Yeah, you mentioned in the book as well.

00:11:38.660 basically most of the people who you talk about do end up executed after like the reason we know

00:11:44.260 that they did this is because they were caught and then they're tried and then of course they

00:11:48.380 were found guilty but you did mention also there's a period of time in which it was not what was it

00:11:54.780 female enslaved people weren't wouldn't be executed there's like a short period of time

00:11:59.940 where because they just realized that like oh no this is reducing the slave population too much we 0.61

00:12:04.640 can't actually, it's a burden financially if we execute. So there's like a small window of time,

00:12:10.400 right? Yeah. Yeah. So some of them were, especially in Virginia, the option was execution

00:12:17.500 or transporting to another country or another state. So sometimes they did that. But I don't

00:12:26.660 know how common that was compared to execution. That's one thing we can't, somebody needs to do

00:12:34.760 the research about that. But it just wasn't me for this book. Well, that's the thing. I think

00:12:40.280 you're doing so much original research here that it's really laying the groundwork, hopefully,

00:12:44.720 for other people to follow up and get some more of these details and answer some questions.

00:12:50.480 Yeah. And that's what I wanted. And I say, I have a full disclaimer, this is not exhaustive,

00:12:55.360 right? I didn't go to every single courthouse in America. That's for a younger scholar to do

00:13:00.560 and build their career on that. These are just case studies. So how I organize the book for

00:13:06.500 your listeners, I have seven case studies, which reflect not only different times in history,

00:13:14.800 different regions in history, but they're organized around different means of lethal

00:13:21.100 resistance. So the first chapter is poison. That's how the women were able to get rid of

00:13:28.600 their owner. The second chapter is a death by feather bed of all things. The third chapter is

00:13:35.300 water. Water is a murder weapon. The fourth is fire. The fifth is an axe, I believe. I'm trying 0.85

00:13:44.260 to get them all straight. The six were picket fences, rails from a picket fence and other

00:13:52.960 assorted weapons. And then the seventh was maybe a hatchet. So that's kind of similar to the

00:14:01.380 chapter five, but a hatchet and physical force. So yeah, I try to represent all of these things

00:14:08.980 in order to stress to the reader 0.99

00:14:10.780 that these women were using 1.00

00:14:13.020 regular household instruments. 1.00

00:14:16.960 They were, everything within the house

00:14:19.100 could be weaponized.

00:14:20.780 And I thought that was really interesting

00:14:22.500 because, you know, I guess I've never thought about

00:14:25.040 what could be used to kill somebody

00:14:27.740 in the 18th century or the early 19th century.

00:14:32.860 And these weapons were all carefully selected.

00:14:36.000 And so I thought that was really interesting, too. And so this is a pre-gun America, right, where not many people had guns at their disposal. So it's hard for us to imagine that today. But it forces people to be a little bit more ingenious about how one would get rid of an oppressive owner.

00:15:00.740 Well, and I really want to emphasize just to the listeners, what you were saying about the forethought that goes into these crimes.

00:15:06.740 There's one instance where they were slowly poisoning a man for six years, I think.

00:15:14.440 Yeah, yeah. 1.00

00:15:16.380 And the reason they wanted to do that is they, I mean, these women were just ingenious. 1.00

00:15:22.600 They knew if they did it all at once, it would elicit suspicion.

00:15:26.120 So if you do it slowly over time, then it would look like a regular illness that he was suffering from. And that's what people thought, that he just had a bad stomach or irritable bowel or whatever our modern medical analysis would be.

00:15:44.260 And so people were not, wouldn't have been immediately alerted to the fact that he was being poisoned were it not for what happened to his body when he died. And so that's how the coroner was like, wait a minute, this is not natural. This is not natural at all. And so that's how they were discovered, the coroner.

00:16:06.820 Well, and that I think that's such a extreme example of the forethought.

00:16:11.460 But yeah, like you were saying, it's not just someone who snapped and murdered somebody.

00:16:15.360 These are all like methodically considered plans.

00:16:19.380 Yes.

00:16:19.760 And one of the pieces of evidence I had that it was methodical is that not only did they

00:16:26.560 select accomplices, but they selected the time and date.

00:16:31.620 They selected the means that they were going to use.

00:16:34.700 Like I said before, and most importantly, and they all had an alternative plan of how they were going to get out of this.

00:16:44.840 So either by in this case that you mentioned, either pretending the guy or hoping that everybody thought the guy was just had a bad stomach or by having concocting this lie, this colossal lie about what actually happened in the house.

00:17:03.660 And so that is something else that I thought was very rich.

00:17:09.720 And it even becomes a little comical.

00:17:12.680 Can we talk about Rose Butler?

00:17:16.020 Yes, by far the most colorful of all.

00:17:23.280 Oh, my goodness.

00:17:24.060 So the very beginning of the Rose Butler chapter, you set up that this is going to be a real tale.

00:17:30.160 if you don't mind i'm just going to read just when a sentence from your book so in the ensuing

00:17:36.260 month rose unraveled a complex plot that included a fortune teller mysterious men in large brimmed

00:17:41.940 hats unpaid debts death threats and a letter hidden inside of a loaf of bread yes yes it's

00:17:52.300 hilarious i mean she's absolutely hilarious okay like it just i don't know i don't think this is

00:17:59.720 going to spoil the book necessarily, but can you just explain the, I love, I love a colorful

00:18:05.780 character from history and Rose Butler just leapt off the page the way that you wrote about her.

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00:20:42.940 Yes, she did. In fact, she was the last chapter I added, you know, and I told the story to my family and they were like, you have to add Rose Butler. And my daughter in particular said that book, that woman will make the whole book.

00:20:59.780 And I said, you're kidding. She said, Mom, you have to add Rose Butler. 1.00

00:21:03.780 So at the last minute, I added her. But she came up with four different stories about an arson that she committed in her owner's home.

00:21:17.480 And each time the story got more colorful. She talked about men in wide brimmed hats.

00:21:24.860 She talked about other people passing her a letter inside a loaf of bread inside her cell in the jail, because while she was in jail, the people's house was set on fire two more times.

00:21:42.680 So it was clear she had accomplices. But who the accomplices were, they just got more and more colorful.

00:21:49.100 She gave different names. They lived around the corner. They were giving her money. At times, she said they were the ones that planned the arson. At other times, she said they forced her into planning the arson.

00:22:05.880 And sometimes she said they are the ones that came and set the fire.

00:22:10.380 And other times she said she set the fire.

00:22:13.860 So it just was just so many colorful tales.

00:22:17.500 And she acted up so bad in the jail where she was being held for almost a year that,

00:22:25.760 you know, the jail officials just didn't know what to do with her.

00:22:29.920 She was irreverent. 0.99

00:22:31.740 She was disrespectful to the ministers. 0.98

00:22:33.760 and they had never seen anything like it.

00:22:36.720 Because at the time, this is in a time period

00:22:40.280 where people expected women to behave a certain way 0.98

00:22:43.760 in America and beyond, I'm sure in Canada as well. 1.00

00:22:47.100 And so to have her cursing and disrespecting clergy 1.00

00:22:52.400 and lying and doing all these things she was doing, 1.00

00:22:56.520 they just had had enough of Rose Butler. 1.00

00:22:59.360 And she was, you know, she just left her mark 1.00

00:23:02.340 for those reasons.

00:23:03.760 But yeah, that story is just, it's almost so colorful that it becomes a little comical,

00:23:10.360 which I'm not trying to make history funny, but it certainly is interesting, Anne.

00:23:14.880 So I read your book and then I was just like, oh my gosh, I was telling my friends about

00:23:18.260 the story of Rose Butler.

00:23:19.460 And then I saw, I think it's in your afterwards, you mentioned like laughing with your family

00:23:22.880 about the story.

00:23:23.600 And I was like, okay, good.

00:23:24.560 Like we can.

00:23:25.820 Right. 1.00

00:23:27.300 She's hilarious.

00:23:28.740 I mean, the stuff she came up with is just ingenious.

00:23:33.760 you know, but surely she had people who assisted her. But it's even her life before that arson

00:23:41.740 was also very colorful, right? This woman is stealing money from her owners. She's taking 1.00

00:23:49.240 party boats on the Hudson River. And this is in the age of slavery, party boats. And so she's

00:23:56.160 buying people silk dresses. She's going to gambling joints. And she's telling her owners 0.93

00:24:03.240 that she's going to Bible study. And so this is how she's having all of these nights to herself.

00:24:08.820 So that is, I argue, is a type of resistance, all of that, that she's doing. She's trying to claim

00:24:15.500 and assert a level of bodily autonomy, you know, so she understands she is not free, but she makes

00:24:23.300 herself as free as possible by using this lie of being in Bible study to then afford her the

00:24:30.980 opportunity and the free time to do all these things that she really wants to do on their dime,

00:24:37.260 no doubt. Like the owners were not aware that she was using their gold coins and their money 0.82

00:24:43.660 to do all of these things and to treat people to lavish meals and treats. So she was just 0.97

00:24:51.020 quite a character. And I, well, I mean, that's such an, that's an extreme example of

00:24:56.440 everything in your book but but just as an example of everything in the book really

00:25:02.860 goes to just build up because like you were saying like in your own history scholarship

00:25:08.800 you know you have been told like oh you know the black women didn't resist they were just kind of

00:25:14.080 passive whatever and that's very much the narrative that I've seen until I read your book

00:25:18.180 as well where you're really filling this in showing these like really interesting people

00:25:22.500 like these characters and like you said their own hearing their own voice really it just really

00:25:29.620 fills in the gaps of that historical record i think well thank you that's what i wanted and

00:25:36.200 you know what else i wanted to do and i wanted to make even though it's a grisly set of facts

00:25:42.380 right and i want your readers to be fully aware what they're getting into uh it's grisly it's

00:25:49.260 not for the faint of heart. But I also wanted to show their humanity, that they were human beings

00:25:57.360 who had wishes and desires, and they weren't grand things. These women were not trying to 1.00

00:26:04.020 start a revolution. They just wanted a revolution in their own circumstances. That said, it doesn't 1.00

00:26:11.080 seem like much to ask for. And so I think I succeed as much as the historical records would

00:26:18.020 allow me to, of just giving them some humanity. And I also tried to give their owners some

00:26:26.540 humanity. Most of them are poor white owners who own very few. So it's also very different from

00:26:34.540 what we would assume would be the case of American slavery. These people were struggling as

00:26:40.560 is poor white slave owners that own one or two or three enslaved people.

00:26:48.720 And so all the way around, you understand the pressures that they were under

00:26:53.460 and also how that then made for a worse life for the enslaved people they owned.

00:27:01.420 And that's such a good point, too.

00:27:02.700 And I found that so interesting as well.

00:27:04.660 I think almost every, maybe every example in your book is like a lower class family who owns very few enslaved people.

00:27:14.360 So it's not the large plantations, you know, it's not like it's not a gone with the wind scenario.

00:27:19.940 Yeah. And this is another opportunity for scholars who come after to explore that.

00:27:26.260 Like we have to move beyond these ideas that we all have that slavery is cotton plantation in Mississippi.

00:27:33.280 And so this is what it might have been like. This is probably what a revolution might have looked like on a farm in rural North America. Right.

00:27:45.300 And so that's another thing I try to, you know, push scholars to try to look at that as well, because, you know, just because somebody's not on a big plantation doesn't mean they haven't found a way to resist slavery or, you know, do a slave revolt.

00:28:03.100 And I use revolt in air quotes because I, in this book, I've expanded the definition beyond what scholar Eugene Genovese did in his seminal work 60, 70 years ago.

00:28:16.120 And so I'm hoping that people understand that slavery was bad regardless.

00:28:23.800 So, you know, I think what people assume is that it was better on these smaller farms, that this was just better.

00:28:34.660 They got to wear better clothes.

00:28:36.540 They got better food.

00:28:37.520 They got to sleep in a bed, which may have been true.

00:28:41.280 But I don't know if one could say it was better.

00:28:44.560 Right.

00:28:44.940 And so the book really lays that out. This was horrific for these people. And so it had to be for them to think that murder was their last best option.

00:28:54.240 I did also want to mention I was I was sort of excited there's just a brief mention in your book

00:29:00.000 of Marie-Joseph Angelique who is a woman in Canada and I'm in Canada and I knew a bit about

00:29:05.700 her story so I just I was excited to see you sort of tie her into that as well because her

00:29:09.960 like again she allegedly set this fire that spread throughout much of Montreal

00:29:15.660 Oh, yes. She stands alone. I mean, no woman in America can touch even a thread of what she did in Canada. So she stands alone in North American slavery history. Okay. She stands alone.

00:29:33.820 And the book that I used is The Hanging of Angelique by Afuia Cooper, if anyone's interested

00:29:41.860 in that.

00:29:42.880 It's a brilliant book.

00:29:44.880 And it was a template that I used for this one.

00:29:48.100 Like, I'm a fan of hers.

00:29:49.880 And that story was just phenomenal.

00:29:53.400 You should read it, Anne.

00:29:54.480 It's just a phenomenal story.

00:29:56.840 No, I will.

00:29:57.360 I know a bit about her story.

00:29:58.940 And I was visiting Montreal a while ago.

00:30:00.720 And I was kind of like, ooh, this is where it was.

00:30:02.840 this is where the fire happened i was like where's the where's the statues where's the

00:30:06.700 i didn't i didn't find anything though yes but um i also wanted at the very beginning of this chat

00:30:13.840 i mentioned the your title so you do brooding over bloody revenge is a quote from one of the

00:30:20.020 women who you profile so she said she had been brooding over her bloody revenge for some time

00:30:25.200 so i mean it's a great line and it also speaks to this the the planning and the plotting that

00:30:32.140 so many of these women did. How did you come to choose that as the title? Right. When I read that

00:30:38.040 story, it's in Jane Williams's chapter, it leapt from the pages. And I knew that had to be the

00:30:44.740 title. And I kind of almost lost that title in because from a publisher standpoint, publishers

00:30:52.720 tend to, sometimes they can change the title of your book. And so, and my daughter, she factors

00:31:00.340 And again, she's a Gen Z-er. She's like, mom, nobody knows what brooding means. Nobody's gonna know. That word is so old fashioned. And I heard her, but I said, okay, I still have to go with that. So I insisted on it. And I told the publisher and the publisher was like, yeah, this, this matches, this works. People can Google the word if they want to know what it means.

00:31:25.680 But but so, you know, you know, I had to go against what Gen Z would would have recommended a representative of Gen Z and went with that again, because not only in the title, but the subtitle of every chapter in this book.

00:31:42.020 And I use words from the cases, if not from the women themselves.

00:31:47.040 It's a subtitle of every single chapter.

00:31:49.340 So it was important for me to have words from that case in my title.

00:31:55.260 And that one left left from the pages.

00:31:58.920 I said, oh, this is spicy.

00:32:01.500 No, and I mean, the title caught my attention, certainly.

00:32:04.340 But then when I read the quote in the book, I was like, oh, I see.

00:32:06.840 I see.

00:32:07.260 This is this came from from the testimony.

00:32:09.440 But you also have some quotes at the beginning. So you have at the beginning, I'm just looking at the book right now. So you have a quote from the people involved and then also quotes from other people. So for instance, this one, I just, it stuck with me. So Simon R. Green's quote, revenge is simply justice with teeth.

00:32:27.380 Yeah, yeah, that's really powerful. So I like that. And I think it really speaks to these cases as well. So yeah, I always use epigraphs, these quotes or poems at the beginning of chapters in all of my books. You know, I found ones that are pretty relevant, considering what these women were actually committing themselves to do.

00:32:55.920 again just you know when i came across the title of your book i'm like oh what's this about

00:33:00.000 i love i love a revenge narrative i love um you know in fiction but also in in history i like i

00:33:08.340 like kind of cheering for somebody as they're coming up with the scheme but so towards the

00:33:13.620 end of the book though so you asked the question did bringing one slave owner to justice disrupt

00:33:17.780 slavery and you say yes can you explain what you mean by that yes and and the readers may disagree

00:33:25.860 And maybe the view, the listeners as well, once they read it, they may say, I don't agree with her.

00:33:33.160 But I think that especially in these small rural towns and villages, which is where all these cases were without exception, maybe only the Galveston one was maybe a little bigger of a city.

00:33:48.600 But they disrupted the sense of peace in the towns where these enslavers lived.

00:33:58.120 So to learn that somebody was successful in killing their owner just really sent the slaveholding or the enslaver community in a tizzy.

00:34:10.560 And so they all wanted just brutal justice.

00:34:13.920 And this is why you see such heinous and grisly executions where black women are being burned alive, burned at the stake, because that that's the only way to write this possibility that you might have somebody that tries it with their owner.

00:34:30.940 And so, yeah, I think that kind of unsettled everybody. And if you know anything about the history of slavery in the U.S., the slave enslavers were perpetually concerned with revolt.

00:34:48.840 They were perpetually concerned that they would be bludgeoned to death in their sleep.

00:34:54.700 And so where did those ideas come from?

00:34:57.540 What comes from stories like this?

00:35:00.340 This is how they get so unnerved and so fearful about what their enslaved people might do

00:35:08.100 to them is because there were actual cases where their enslaved people did bludgeon them

00:35:13.360 in their sleep. 0.97

00:35:14.100 So that's why I think, yeah, on some level, they were successful in disrupting the sense of peace. And not only that, and in the case of Lucy in Galveston, that particular case, the people who own Lucy, after she killed the enslaver's wife, he never, the husband, never again purchased another enslaved person. 0.53

00:35:40.720 And so, yeah, so it ended his, maybe his history of being an enslaver.

00:35:49.080 So I think that was powerful.

00:35:50.940 So he never tried it again.

00:35:52.700 And so, yeah, so she was successful in that, in that vein.

00:35:56.140 Yeah, and especially, well, what you talk about in your books, that's what I'm thinking about,

00:36:00.480 are in these sort of smaller situations where there's a family, and they have just a few enslaved people.

00:36:06.980 It's such an intimate living situation.

00:36:09.120 like you have to have a level of trust like these are the people cooking your food these are the

00:36:14.320 people watching your children and when they as one person does kill two of your children like

00:36:20.300 so there's a level of trust that has to be there and when the trust is broken like that starts to

00:36:27.500 disrupt the entire concept of slavery if you can't right and it disrupts more importantly in

00:36:34.920 the sense of mastery. You can't master these people or dominate them fully because every

00:36:43.000 meal they bring to you, you have no idea what's in that meal. Every drink, in the case of Captain

00:36:50.780 Codman in Charlestown, Colonial Massachusetts, every drink, his tea infusions, his milk, his

00:37:00.800 everything they were dumping that arsenic into. And so, yeah, every part of your life, you're

00:37:07.520 nervous. So it disrupts your sense of peace. And it might, you know, think, well, maybe I don't

00:37:12.880 have them inside my house, or maybe I just get out of the slaveholding business. You know, we'll

00:37:18.440 never know. But it certainly could mean that they would never have peace in their home, as long as

00:37:23.800 enslaved people were working inside their home. And it also made me wonder, you know, the research 0.98

00:37:31.960 you're able to find about this is from these people who were caught and taken to trial and

00:37:36.440 then their statements and things, but I'm sure there are other people who were not caught, right?

00:37:41.660 Exactly. Yes, of course. Of course. And we'll never know. We'll never know how many of those

00:37:48.880 there were. And so that's the thing. That's one of the things about history is we have to have

00:37:55.900 documentation to say that it's history and to say that it's a fact. But we know with all things,

00:38:03.200 you know, there's a possibility that the number of incidents like this could reach up to the

00:38:11.080 hundreds or the thousands. We never know. Because if they were successful in eluding

00:38:18.460 suspicion or evading suspicion, then they don't make it into the history books.

00:38:25.240 Well, and especially like the, you know, the slow poison over six years, like how many people,

00:38:30.760 so many people died back then of various diseases. It wouldn't be that suspicious,

00:38:34.720 especially if it was maybe an older person or someone who seemed already ill.

00:38:39.360 Exactly. So that, that was, I said, wow, we will just never know. And then conversely,

00:38:45.200 for those who were accused of poisoning their owners. There were a lot of those who were

00:38:51.620 accused of it and hanged and executed for it. But we know that the sanitary conditions were

00:39:00.440 very poor at earlier moments in American history and world history. And so I gave one example,

00:39:07.040 milk pasteurization, which happened in the 19th century. And so when people died of

00:39:15.200 illnesses after drinking milk before then, they're always accusing their enslaved people.

00:39:22.160 But, you know, possibly it could just be the fact that it was unpasteurized milk and it will kill

00:39:28.220 you. So your book is so interesting. And I'm really excited to see how other scholars, younger

00:39:37.000 people who are just sort of building their careers, what they're able to find and how they can

00:39:41.440 keep going with what you've started here? I really, and that's really what I hoped that

00:39:47.520 people would do, is to take this and go out and do their own research. Like, it's not okay

00:39:53.860 to continue that same old trope that, oh, enslaved women just, you know, they tended to resist

00:40:01.160 covertly or quietly. That's not okay anymore. There's evidence. I've shown people how to go

00:40:09.120 look for the evidence and where it might be. And we have to do this research. And so there has to

00:40:14.960 be someone who's willing to make this their life's work. And so in 20 years, we can have a 300 page

00:40:21.900 book that is exhaustive of all the incidents like this in American history. So I'm hoping that that

00:40:28.840 will happen. Well, thank you so much for talking with me today. And thank you so much for writing

00:40:33.540 this book that was just like, you know, you did say it's, um, you know, it's not easy reading in

00:40:38.960 that way. The subject matter is very heavy, but you've written it in such a way that I was just

00:40:42.920 glued to every page. I was just like, what, what's the next chapter going to even be about

00:40:47.000 when I got to Rose Butler, I was just like, Oh my gosh. Like, yeah. And thank you so much. And

00:40:56.180 it's okay. Like I, I completely had so much fun writing it and, and there are bits of comedy in

00:41:03.860 every bit of the stories, right. Mostly because, you know, of how I wrote it, not because the story

00:41:09.620 itself is funny, but, um, you know, just using their words and stuff like that. So it is an easy

00:41:16.080 read for the listeners. And I really hope people will read it because I think it, it gives you an

00:41:24.140 offers so much while not bogging you down with traditional historical writing, which can be a

00:41:30.840 little dull and inaccessible. So this is very accessible intentionally. Well, thank you so

00:41:36.880 much for talking with me today. Thank you, Anne. Thank you.

00:41:43.960 So again, this book, which is so good and so interesting, it's called Brooding Over Bloody

00:41:49.260 Revenge, Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance. It's now available for purchase wherever you

00:41:54.080 purchase your books from. There's a little link in the show notes if you want to buy it through

00:41:57.040 bookshop.org using my link. And Nikki M. Taylor, she's a professor at Howard University. And I

00:42:02.880 just want to say, so she specializes in 19th century African-American history. Her subspecialties

00:42:07.980 are in urban African-American women and intellectual history. She is such a fabulous

00:42:13.240 person. I really hope that I can find a reason to invite her back on this podcast again. We had such

00:42:17.960 a good time talking to each other. And I can't recommend this book enough. It's so good. It's

00:42:22.420 so interesting. And it's such a necessary new, like she was revealing stuff that hasn't been

00:42:28.480 in books before, which is always so important and so interesting. Anyway, this is Vulgar History.

00:42:32.700 My name is Anne Foster. You can find me wherever you are on the internet, really. We're on

00:42:36.600 Instagram at vulgarhistorypod. Now I'm on threads at vulgarhistorypod. TikTok at vulgarhistory. And

00:42:42.940 you can get transcripts of recent episodes provided by Aveline Malek of The Wordery

00:42:47.180 at vulgarhistory.com. I also have a Patreon at patreon.com slash annfosterwriter. If you want to

00:42:53.580 join there, you can get early ad-free access to all episodes of Vulgar History, as well as access

00:42:58.840 to bonus episodes I put there. And also recently we have a Discord server, so you can go in there

00:43:03.840 and hang out with other members of the Tits Out Brigade. Anyway, I hope you're all having a nice

00:43:08.940 summer. And until next time, keep your pants on and your tits out. 0.99

00:43:15.380 Vulgar History is hosted, written, and researched by Anne Foster and edited by Christina Lumagi. 0.99

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Author Interview： Nikki M. Taylor (Brooding Over Bloody Revenge： Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance)

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