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5 - Rape and Mutiny at Fort Jackson

Black Laundresses Testify in Civil War Louisiana

from Part II - War, Gender Violence, and the Courts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 December 2023

Karen Cook Bell
Affiliation:
Bowie State University
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Summary

Crystal Feimster examines the Black soldiers of the 4th Regiment of the Native Guard (also known as the Corps dAfrique) stationed at Fort Jackson, Louisiana, and the laundresses who served them and their white officers. Both Black soldiers and laundresses were formerly enslaved people who had seized their freedom by joining and aiding the Union cause. Over the course of six weeks, in December 1863 and January 1864, they engaged in open munity to protest racial and sexual violence inflicted by White Union officers. In so doing they made visible the violent terms of interracial interaction that informed the meaning of wartime freedom and Black labor (terms that were still very much rooted in the prisms and discourses of enslavement). More importantly, as free labor, Black women began to negotiate a deeply abusive racial and sexual terrain.

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