As If They Had Been Joined by a Clergyman

Abstract

This chapter makes an important intervention in the existing scholarship of slave marriage in the United States and the centrality of “jumping the broom” in that historiography. It analyzes the ceremony’s diverse expressions throughout the antebellum South, arguing that enslaved people in different areas, similarly to their British counterparts, reimagined it for their own community’s preferences. The chapter then draws upon various narratives to examines how gender and social status were infused into the custom, showcasing how it reflected contests of dominance and domestic equality. It also overturns assumptions that the ceremony was universal among the enslaved, as many testimonials reveal it was largely associated with “field hands,” while those enslaved in the plantation house claimed to receive elaborate weddings that included Christian ministers. The chapter dismantles several myths that are now associated with the custom by historicizing the motivations for people who used it while simultaneously explaining why others rejected it. The chapter also provides a number of graphs and charts, which display how different practitioners performed the ritual differently and used it for different purposes.