“Celia: A Slave - A True Story” Melton McLaurin

This post was written a year ago, and tells the whole story of the book; thus it is chock full of spoilers. However, if you enjoy historical writing, the book is worth the read even knowing the story.

This book tells a story of men and women, black and white, and the way in which power is wielded against them and the often desperate acts they perform in response to the impotence of their situations. McLaurin writes: “The life of Celia demonstrates how slavery placed individuals, black and white, in specific situations that forced them to make and act upon personal decisions of a fundamentally moral nature” As in the fictional story “Kindred,” the slaveholder is killed by a slave in order to prevent a rape. However, Celia was a real woman, rather than fictional, and there is strong evidence that she had been raped many times over a period of five years by her master, Robert Newsom. In the same way as Bigger in “Native Son,” another fictional character, Celia tried to cover the death of her owner by burning his body, and like Bigger, Celia was convicted and condemned to death.

“Celia, A Slave” is a historical account of the trial of a 19-year-old slave girl owned by Robert Newsom in Callaway County, Missouri. Missouri had been admitted into the union in 1920 as a slave state by the Missouri Compromise. As Kansas, a neighboring state, is considering entry into the union as a free state, residents of Callaway County, Missouri, are caught between those who are concerned that if Kansas enters as a free state, then Missourians would be at risk of losing their right to own slaves and the Unionists who hope that is exactly what the eventual outcome would be. This political turmoil is the backdrop to the trial of Celia for the murder of Robert Newsom in 1855.

By design, Newsom purchases Celia with rape in mind. Newsom “set out to purchase a replacement for his wife, dead now for nearly a year.” The sexual power of man over woman is clear in both the cases of Celia and of Dana in “Kindred.” Both Dana and Celia kill their rapist or would be rapist; however, Dana used a knife to kill Rufus before he is able to rape her, because she realizes that “A slave is a slave. Anything could be done to her” (Butler), while Celia endures five years of rape before killing Newsom with a club. In both books, fire is used as a way to hide the murders, because both murderers know that if the crimes are discovered then their lives are forfeit.

It is not clear, however, that slave owners were as exempt from prosecution as Butler would have us believe in “Kindred.”. McLaurin tells us that, under Missouri law at least, slaves “were entitled to a court-appointed attorney.” In Celia’s case, the judge was pro-Unionist and as such appointed a lawyer to defend Celia who would do so in more than a perfunctory manner. Her rights were restricted because many southern states had laws that forbid blacks from testifying against whites, even if the white in question was already dead. Thus, Celia could not testify at her own trial, and this was a severe blow to the defense, because “self-defense was the sole legal argument extended by southern courts to slaves accused of capital crimes.”

Celia’s struggle is based on her relationship in the power structure at the time. As a slave woman, she was dominated by practically everyone else, white men and women and black men. George, a fellow slave on the Newsom farm, gave Celia an ultimatum saying that “he would have nothing more to do with her” if she continued her relationship with Newsom. This ultimatum put Celia into a moral quandary as she had to decide whether to submit to Newsom and give up George, or should she resist Newsom, an act that surely would result in her sale or possible death. The choice was motivated not so much on whether she would or would not continue to be raped by Newsom but rather on her freedom to choose to love George. Of course, Celia could have chosen to flee, a common form a resistance among slaves, but that would have meant giving up the prize she sought in George and abandoning her two children. The dilemma that Celia faces is due not only to the power that Newsom holds as a white man, but is caused by George’s power as a man. Celia is powerless to control the sexual relationship she has with George and is compelled to submit to his challenge. McLaurin wrote that in the antebellum South, “The sexual politics of slavery presented an exact paradigm of the power relationships within the larger society. Black female slaves were essentially powerless in a slave society, unable to legally protect themselves from the physical assaults of either write or black males. White males, at the opposite extreme, were all powerful, with practically unlimited access to black females. The sexual politics of slavery in the antebellum South are perhaps most clearly revealed by the fact that recorded cases of rape of female slaves are virtually nonexistent.”


The sole supporters for Celia are the defense attorneys, and they put on a strong defense despite the odds. Celia had confessed to her crimes, but Celia’s lawyers asked that she not be convicted of first degree murder. Exigent circumstances are cited; Celia’s lawyers argued that she had the right to use mortal force to defend herself against rape. Their argument was based on two facts: “throughout slaveholding states the law gave the right to use force to repel physical attacks that threatened his or her life” and this right had been held up in many courts and Section 29 of the second article of the Missouri statues of 1845 which stated that is was a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to be defined”. Celia’s lawyers argued that the words “any woman” applied to slave women as well as white women.

The defense did not hold, and Celia was executed. The prosecution, judge and jury in Celia’s trial were not only white men, but landed white men, many of which were slave owners. Celia was tried in a system where no one of her own kind holds any power. We can only speculate how Celia felt about having whites defend her against whites since there is no record of Celia’s words. In the end, it did not matter that white lawyers on Celia’s defense team served as her champions; she still paid for her behavior with her life.

Written on 25 April 2009.