Legislating Black Bodies: How Delaware’s Judicial Punishment Extended the Violence of Enslavement, 1865-77

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Abstract

This paper explores the explicit and implicit way in which Delaware’s legal and judicial systems extended the violence of enslavement during the federal Reconstruction period between 1865 and 1877. This research extends the scholarship of historians Robert Caldwell and Yohuru Williams by examining Delaware’s unique brutal systems of public corporal and capital punishments during this era, legal punishments which lasted well into the twentieth century. Historic newspapers provided information on public opinion, sentencing decisions by judges, and descriptions of punishments, revealing clear racial disparities in convictions. This research also identifies the details of these punishments, which mirrored other forms of white supremacist violence pre- and post-Civil War, such as the use of the whipping post and the spectacular nature of white supremacist violence. Using both quantitative data analysis and qualitative examples, I demonstrate how Delaware’s legal and judicial systems wielded oppressive racist violence to limit the ways Black Delawareans defined agency and liberation in this period. This includes: the reunification of families, enfranchisement, political representation, mobility, choice of labor, and education. Furthermore, this research contributes to the limited historiography of Delaware’s corporal and capital punishment, and extends the conversation around the connections between enslavement and the United States’ judicial institutions.

Author

• Sarah Lacour, University of Delaware