Brooding over Bloody Revenge: Enslaved Women's Lethal Resistance

by Nikki M. Taylor

From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance. By amplifying their voices and experiences, Brooding over Bloody Revenge strongly challenges assumptions that enslaved women only participated in covert, non-violent forms of resistance, when in fact they consistently seized justice for themselves and organized toward revolt. Nikki M. Taylor expertly reveals how women killed for deeply personal instances of injustice committed by their owners. The stories presented, which span centuries and legal contexts, demonstrate that these acts of lethal force were carefully pre-meditated. Enslaved women planned how and when their enslavers would die, what weapons and accomplices were necessary, and how to evade capture in the aftermath. Original and compelling, Brooding Over Bloody Revenge presents a window into the lives and philosophies of enslaved women who had their own ideas about justice and how to achieve it.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Race, Feminism, Historical, Audiobook, American History

250 pages, Hardcover

First published July 13, 2023

About the author

Nikki Marie Taylor is an American historian. She is professor of history at Howard University and author of four books on nineteenth-century African-American history.

Reviews

[Kristi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing book to listen to knowing that some women took their situations into their own hands and did something about it. And I loved that Michelle Williams was the narrator, and the last story was about Galveston (she's born close to there).

[Alexa Esperanza · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a difficult read for me, but soo worth it. So often, Black Women’s stories are under told and under represented in U.S. history, and so books like this are so important. The stories are presented within the framework of “Black Feminist practice of Justice”, and do a great job of providing context and humanizing these Women in a way that makes this book very unique and powerful.

The author explains that enslaved women who ultimately chose to kill, did so as a last resort after facing some of the worst torture known to humanity. For this reason, please be prepared to read some incredibly disturbing information.

[Antonia · Rating 5 out of 5]

WOW

[ReneeAlesia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very clear and engaging!

[Bri Little · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such an interesting and integral text. It reads like a true crime book, and with necessary historical context (such as how the law was weighed against enslaved people) that defines the rationale for these acts of resistance.
I really connected with the deeply personal nature of the murders covered in this book; much of history overlooks Black women’s resistance efforts in favor of more masculine and flashy revolts, but these acts are just as important—they are Black women’s radical tradition of meting out their own forms of justice. Very gory and very cool.

[Em · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nikki M. Taylor made a major narrative and historical shift in the literature with her upcoming release Brooding Over Bloody Revenge. Taylor is the Chair in the Department of History at Howard University and specializes in nineteenth-century African American History. In Brooding Over Bloody Revenge she gives voice to and centers the Black women who exercised lethal slave resistance in the US.

This history book both tells the stories of these Black women and examines the particulars of why these women chose to use murder as their ultimate form of resistance to being enslaved. She teaches readers about the prior narratives that exist such as Melton A. McLaurin's Celia: A Slave and some of her own that honored the full spectrum of enslaved women's resistance and calls out much of the history in the literature that decidedly left these stories out or told them from the perspective of male slaves who were given much of the resistance credit.

I enjoyed reading her well flesh-out argument that is the foundation of the book asserting that, in her own words, "retaliatory violence is a morally legitimate response to the injustice within slavery."

Thank you to the author and publisher for the e-arc copy!

[Jamie Park · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am so grateful for Nikki M. Taylor for writing this book. I wanted to read about true resistance from enslaved women, but what we usually have is watered down or written as a one of a kind exception, but of course they would violently rebel.
This is honest, brutal, and extremely well researched.
I thought I knew about execution and the disposal of bodies but I did not know about Gibetting.
Think of the diseases spreading through these old colonies and then they just have bodies hanging around.

All of this is terrible but I love the book and I am so grateful I got to read it. Thank you for the ARC.

[Katie Nelson]

Some interesting stories about the violent resistance of enslaved women. I was especially moved by the story of Cloe, a young girl who suffered as the lone enslaved worker in the home. The description of the isolation she felt and the torture she experienced was heartbreaking and explained the complexity of her decisions. I initially wanted to read this to pair some of the ideas with the novel Kindred as read during AP Lit, but I found Cloe's story to be quite relevant to Frankenstein as well and it also fostered some interesting dialogue there.

[N.D. · Rating 5 out of 5]

These untold stories of enslaved Black women's violent resistance to enslavement were both difficult to read, because of the conditions that led them to commit such awful acts, and the historical silence that deemed their lives and deaths as irrelevant and unimportant. Taylor's research and retelling humanized the women who not only brooded over bloody revenge but took their revenge despite knowing the consequence would be death. Not only death, but for some, the pitiless mistreatment of their body postmortem. This book is a reminder of the importance of robust US history courses and, of course, the need for African American History to be taught in K-12.

[Amy Trostle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great historical investigation of enslaved women who violently resisted the systematic oppression they were bound by. The book reads like a true crime novel at times, and the author includes a lot of excellent images and other visual aids to guide her narrative of these women.

[Mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

always so crazy reading books by people I know but I thoroughly enjoyed this! that being said this is not necessarily "pop history" but its style veers into true crime territory at time. it is an easy read despite its content but certainly a necessary read.

[Eva · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Review copy from netgalley for review consideration)
The history of enslaved women of African descent, particularly those who have led mutinies and fought back against enslavers, is something that has interested me for a long time. This is also an area of scholarship where there is a gap, because while there are essential and very well-researched books about mutinies and rebellions led by men like Toussaint L'Ouverture and Nat Turner, Black women have often been left out of these discussions with the exception of more prominent figures like Harriet Tubman.

The introduction starts with a story of retribution by an enslaved woman of African descent, Charlotte, against Peggy, the white wife of the enslaver who owned her, Captain James Daniel. Reminiscent of Marie-Joseph Angélique, a Portuguese-born enslaved woman of African descent enslaved in what's now Quebec--as explored in Dr. Afua Cooper's landmark text, "The Hanging of Angélique," she was rumoured to be responsible for setting fire to the house of her enslaver and was hanged. In the case of Charlotte, in Kentucky, in 1812, her story reveals that 'enslaved women were not always willing to resist slavery covertly or nonviolently.' Unfortunately, like Angélique, Charlotte was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death in Winchester, Kentucky, in February 1812 after confessing to the murder of her enslaver's wife. She, like Angélique, was also hanged.

I'm also reminded of another enslaved woman of African descent, Chloe Cooley, whose story is not widely known. Enslaved in the Niagara region of Ontario, Canada, her enslaver forced her violently onto a boat to go across to America and be sold to someone else. Cooley resisted forcefully, and although she went across the river and it's not known what happened to her, that act of resistance helped to change the law in Ontario in the 1790s and ultimately, decades later, in 1834, when Britain abolished slavery, Canada as a country of the Dominion of Great Britain, followed suit.

As the author notes, it is hugely significant to know the stories of enslaved women of African descent who resisted. While it is very heartening to see more scholars come out with these stories and more about enslaved women, there is still a gap in the amount of literature available. Further, it's also very difficult to know for certain how many enslaved women murdered their enslavers 'in the United States before 1865' due to several factors relating to archival records, their availability and existence, the survival of those records if they existed, the Civil War, and more.

The author also calls to attention scholar Rebecca Hall's significant works in these areas, including an article 'Not Killing Me Softly' from 2010, and the graphic novel 'Wake: the Hidden History of Women-Led Slave Revolts.'

Arguing that enslaved women resisted slavery in many cases with deadly violence, the author states that their ideas about injustice were a central motivation, and tells this from the framework of a Black feminist theoretical approach, further framed in the appropriate historical and legal contexts.

Additionally, the author calls to attention the fact that some of the 'confessions' from enslaved women of African descent for murder were extorted by enslavers, such as in the case of Cloe, a teenager, threatened 'with both a beating and hanging to elicit a confession for the death of her owners' children in 1801.' The author further explains the challenges that courts presented during the antebellum era, making it incredibly difficult for Black defendants to obtain justice.

What follows in the chapters of this volume are essential, but also brutally violent, accounts of enslaved women fighting back against an already gruesomely violent institution that threatened their lives on a daily basis. The literature existing about enslaved men of African descent revolting, including Dutty Boukman at the start of the Haitian Revolution in the 1790s, are absolutely essential. It is even more essential, however, to also know the women involved in these struggles. Too often the history of the Civil Rights movement as well, getting into the 1950s and 60s in America, talks frequently of the hugely significant work and activism of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, and many others, but does not speak about the women who supported these men (as discussed in "The Three Mothers: How the Mothers of Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin Shaped a Nation" by Anna Malaika Tubbs). There is a shift in the scholarship and in books that are now focusing much more on the monumental contributions of Black women who are lesser-known, including female members of the Black Panther party, of women like Constance Baker Motley who was a pioneer in the legal field, and Shirley Chisholm, who ran for President of the United States. It is well past overdue to focus on women like Marie-Joseph Angélique and Chloe Cooley who, while they in particular are not discussed in this particular text, form a cornerstone of Black women's resistance to slavery. This volume is essential reading for anyone wanting to understand more about these methods of resistance, concepts of justice, and more.

[ISRA · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having previously read The Hanging of Angelique which had in my opinion too much exposition about the owner(s), this book is so much more precise & well executed. Taylor manages to detail the climate of the colony or state, the statistics, the history of the owners & the enslaved if applicable & detail their crimes in a conversational tone so the text doesn’t feel dense or dry at all. And while Taylor highlights 7 cases she also includes summaries of similar instances or crimes such as Marie Joseph Angelique & the deaths of other enslaved people plus the wrongfully accused enslaved people.
This book powerfully challenges erasure of black women’s resistance while simultaneously shedding a light on white female oppression of black women as several targeted their female owners. Additionally, the harsher punishments doled out - burning women at the stake. It really calls for more analysis of the power dynamics of white women versus black women as well as their complicity in enslavement & what black women were subjected to & perceived by both sexes in regional isolation - since some of these cases occurred in the North where there was a lower enslaved population leading people to think it was somehow more humane than the southern slavery.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

From the colonial through the antebellum era, enslaved women in the US used lethal force as the ultimate form of resistance and personal justice. Hundreds of women planned and enacted murder on the people who enslaved, abused and terrorized them.
I often think about enslaved women using everyday resistance to preserve some dignity. For example, insolence, disobedience, feigned illness, absenteeism, work slowdowns, temporarily running away, and poisoning food. But murder was also a tool they used. Despite their actions, the author notes that enslaved Black women were the least violent people in American society during the age of slavery.
This book tells some of their stories through a Black Feminist lens, which the author reiterates throughout. The writing is a bit academic and boring. It felt like a dissertation rather than an engaging book. But the stories need to be told and read. My favorite was about Chloe who lived near me in PA and the author's explanation of Pennsylvania’s Gradual Abolition Act of 1780, the nation’s first abolitionist legislation.

[Sheare Bliss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Powerful and challenging, Taylor’s book adds layers to events largely unreported, deliberately hidden, or given short shrift, particularly by white historians ( and therefore more likely to be male).

In 1970, a high school junior, I wrote a paper entitled “The Peculiar Institution: The Myth of the Happy Slave”. I cringe now at my amateur use of sources, my naïveté, and simplistic analysis, and am depressed that after 53 years, the level of understanding of the horrors of enslavement and racism make as much impression on the white majority as in 1850, Taylor’s books give me some hope that even if we have to smack people with the volumes, we may eventually get somewhere.

Here’s what struck me; I have said to friends that being black in this country must be akin to living under hostile occupation. American enslavement is seldom compared to the Nazi murder of more than 11 million gypsies, Jews, Slavs or political prisoners, and I suspect it’s because essentially it is white on white crime.

We find justifying murder difficult to impossible—unless the accused is combatting cruelty or persecution. And white. Ask yourself why. Read this, and continue to do so.

Perhaps you will learn why it was necessary for my close friends to explain why black women find it difficult to wholly trust white women, among other things. And perhaps you will finally understand deeply why the history of enslavement in this country has left such damage and begin considering how to combat the blindness that accompanies privilege.

[Anna Kulcsar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Incredible read. Heart breaking. Horrifying.

It was really good for me to be reminded by this book of the level of desperation experienced by enslaved women. Slavery seems bad in our minds, but it was awful enough for women to want to kill to change their situations.

I didn't love her trying to fit modern political concepts into the lives and thoughts of these enslaved women. Don't do that. There was also a solid bit of conjecture which can become a slippery slope real fast.

Anyway, read this book.

[Gwen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Learning what this women had to endure was heartbreaking. For too long the slave woman was viewed as a “thing” to use. These women decided that enough was enough. They paved the way for a better life for us.

[Kendall]

Wow. I had never thought about what enslaved women's resistance may have looked like prior to reading this book for class. The fact that someone did the research required to put this book together is incredible. I'm looking forward to having Dr. Taylor come to my class later this week.

[Hannah Wulz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book. Bet interesting and I learned a lot. Highly recommend

[Devinee]

Blackgirlthatreads rec

[OoohGoshTara Reads · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Black Women’s stories are so often underrepresented and not told especially in U.S. history. And that’s what makes this book so powerful. Well researched and informative. I would now like to know more about the black feminist practice of justice as a form of resistance to slavery.

[Nav · Rating 4 out of 5]

The framework is excellent (keeps everything moving along and organized and gives context) and emphasizes that this isn't just some, new unique "true crime" angle.

[Kaleb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing short of amazing. I wish more people knew about this book.

[Tarry Palmer · Rating 1 out of 5]

The writing is remedial at best. Taylor uses too much speculation, has inaccurate assessments, overuse of "likely" and "must have been" diminishes this book's believability and what are facts.

[jerilynn rosenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really good, very educational. Reads a bit like an academic piece.

[Justine · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can’t say enough good things about this book. I read a decent amount of non-fiction, but not all non-fiction authors are good story-tellers. Some simply relay facts in a boring, monotonous manner. Brooding Over Bloody Revenge sort of reads like a novel, except the stories are real. The chapters were all the perfect length to me—long enough for me to feel like I knew enough about each story, but concise enough for readers to avoid getting bogged down with detail. The stories are absolutely fascinating. I was utterly intrigued by the bravery and resistance of the Black women discussed in the book. This is my favorite read of the year so far and I have already begun looking into Taylor’s other work!