Emory Professor Refutes Theory about African American Marital Instability

            Deeply ingrained theories about the impact of slave marriages on modern African American marital stability is challenged in a recent a new book by Frances Smith Foster, Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Emory University.  

 Documents examined by Dr. Foster show that even though enslaved people could not marry legally, many did so anyway for life.  Her evidence comes from letters, poems, sermons, essays, court cases, and articles written by the enslaved and by antebellum African Americans who were free.

            Antebellum records she examined that were written by enslaved people suggest that brides and grooms vowed to stay faithful “ ‘til death or distance do us part.” Dr. Foster says "In fact, accounts by enslaved African Americans reveal that wedding officiators deliberately declared that only God could dissolve a wedding, not distance or slave owners."
            Dr. Foster reveals that historians developed their ideas of slave marriage "from stories told by people who were not enslaved themselves," believing that marriage vows were fragile due to death, distance, and many other factors.  The theory took hold and was dubbed with the modern labels of “post traumatic slavery disorder” or post traumatic slavery syndrome” to explain why modern African Americans are less likely than white Americans to make commitments to marriage and monogamy.  One example of how this myth is propagated today is a recent article in Essence magazine about how African Americans can break free from the “bonds of slavery [that] continue to hold Black folks captive.”

            “Many modern African Americans buy into the misconception that they cannot commit and are ultimately doomed to failure in relationships with the opposite sex,” Dr. Foster says, adding that “the men are incarcerated, and the women are ‘demanding, emasculating, or traumatized,’ all because Black Americans do not have a heritage of marital success as do white Americans.”
              She refutes these notions pointing out that “Slaves usually celebrated their marriages with their families and friends. Some even were able to have lavish weddings, marrying in churches and exchanging rings. Because many African Americans believed in staying faithful to their spouses until death, they chose their partners carefully. When free African Americans fell in love with people who were enslaved, it was not uncommon for them to forfeit their freedom so that they could marry their beloved and live together. They viewed ‘freedom a dubious gift, a counterfeit coin, if they couldn't spend it on the people they loved’."

Read more in Dr. Foster’s book,  ‘Till Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America was published by the Oxford University Press (2010). It is a companion to her earlier volume, “Love and Marriage in Early African America published by Northeastern University Press (2007).  Both are products of the Center for the Study of Law and Religion's project on "Sex, Marriage, and Family & the Religions of the Book.

Dr. Foster is the recipient of the  Association of Departments of English "Francis Andrew March Award" for exceptional service to the profession of English. She is an editor of The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature, The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, and the author of a dozen other volumes.

The Center for the Study of Law and Religion (CSLR) at Emory University is home to world-class scholars and forums on the religious foundations of law, politics, and society. It offers first-rank expertise on how the teachings and practices of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam have shaped and can continue to transform the fundamental ideas and institutions of our public and private lives. The scholarship of CSLR faculty provides the latest perspectives, while its conferences and public forums foster reasoned and robust public debate.