The Mark of Slavery: Disability, Race, and Gender in Antebellum America (Volume 1)

This book makes disability legible in the histories of both slavery and race, arguing that disability is a critical category of historical analysis. Bondage complicated and contributed to enslaved people’s experiences of complexly embodied conditions that ranged across the physical, sensory, cognitive, and psychological. Ableist histories of racial slavery have long overlooked how the social relations of disability shaped people’s everyday lives, particularly within enslaved families, communities, and culture. At the same time, antebellum Americans persistently constructed and framed racial ideology through ideas about disability, producing and naturalizing links between blackness and disability on the one hand and whiteness and ability on the other. Disability was central to the larger relations of power that structured antebellum society and figured prominently in racial projects that unfolded in the laws of slavery, medical discourses of race, pro- and antislavery political rhetoric, and popular culture like blackface minstrelsy and freak shows. The disabling images of blackness created in these various registers of American life resounded long after slavery’s end, gradually fading into less specific notions of black inferiority and damage imagery. The Mark of Slavery simultaneously examines relations of power and the materiality of the body and makes clear that just as blackness and disability were not mutually exclusive categories, enslaved people’s lived experiences of disability were not entirely separate from and unrelated to representations of disability that fueled racial ideology. Exploring the disability history of slavery Time and again, antebellum Americans justified slavery and white supremacy by linking blackness to disability, defectiveness, and dependency. Jenifer L. Barclay examines the ubiquitous narratives that depicted black people with disabilities as pitiable, monstrous, or comical, narratives used not only to defend slavery but argue against it. As she shows, this relationship between ableism and racism impacted racial identities during the antebellum period and played an overlooked role in shaping American history afterward. Barclay also illuminates the everyday lives of the ten percent of enslaved people who lived with disabilities. Devalued by slaveholders as unsound and therefore worthless, these individuals nonetheless carved out an unusual autonomy. Their roles as caregivers, healers, and keepers of memory made them esteemed within their own communities and celebrated figures in song and folklore. Prescient in its analysis and rich in detail, The Mark of Slavery is a powerful addition to the intertwined histories of disability, slavery, and race. | Cover Title Copyright Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Disability, Embodiment, and Slavery in the Old South 2. Reimagined Communities: Disability and the Making of Slave Families, Communities, and Culture 3. A Dose of Law: The Dialogics of Race and Disability in Southern Slave Law and Medicine 4. "Cannibals All!" The Politics of Slavery, Ableism, and White Supremacy 5. One Hell of a Metaphor: Disability and Race on the Antebellum Stage Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index Back cover |"This original work adds an important new voice to conversations about slavery, disability, and medical history. Exceptional analysis of an understudied topic" — Library Journal (starred review) "Addressing an often-overlooked aspect of the experiences of enslaved people, Barclay intricately examines the connection between racism, disabilities and slavery, as well as the legacy it left behind, in this important and well-researched volume." — Ms. Magazine " The Mark of Slavery is not simply a study of disability discourse. Rather, the book examines disability as both a discourse about race and slavery and as a lived experience affecting the lives of thousands of enslaved people." — Black Perspectives | Jenifer L. Barclay is an assistant professor of history at the University at Buffalo.