Enslaved women could not testify against white men in court.

Evidence

Husbands were legally entitled to force sex on their wives, and the marital rape exemption lasted in all fifty states until the 1970s. White women who claimed they were assaulted by white men who were not their husbands had to clear a host of evidentiary hurdles, such as proving that they had resisted, had reported the attack quickly, were severely injured, were not having sex outside of marriage, and had corroborating evidence. These legal impediments were insurmountable for Black women. The vast majority of enslaved women had no right to testify in court at all against white men charged with felonies. The only legal recourse existed when an enslaved woman was raped by a man other than her enslaver. In that case, the enslaver could sue the abuser for trespass to chattel, a civil violation of the enslaver’s property rights. White men settled disputes between them arising from sexual abuse of enslaved women by enslaved men outside of court. — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 217

Categorization

• XREF: The progression from slavery-era legal exclusion to 1970s marital rape exemption is a concrete timeline of legal personhood expanding by degrees — resonates with how legal standing is the operational definition of citizenship.