Black Women Face Double Exploitation: Labor and Sexual Violence

Freed Black women faced systematic sexual violence with no legal recourse. White men who raped Black women were almost never prosecuted in Southern courts. Freedmen's Bureau records documented thousands of cases of assault against Black women by employers. Black women who refused sexual advances risked losing their labor contracts or facing vagrancy charges. The Memphis Massacre's five documented rapes reflected a broader pattern in which sexual violence was a tool of racial domination throughou