The Problem of Slavery in Christian America: An Ethical-Judicial History of American Slavery and Racism

by Joel McDurmon

Virginia passed a law in 1691 penalizing any white women who would give birth to “a bastard child by a Negro.” She would be fined 15 pounds (about two and a half year’s wages for a free farm laborer) and sold into indentured servitude for five years. The government split the revenue from the fine three ways among itself, the local church parish, and the informer—heavily incentivizing nosiness and invasion of privacy. The child would be held as an indenture until 30 years old.27 Under the same statute, any white male or female actually marrying a black, mixed, or Indian, bond or free, would “within three months be banished from this dominion forever.” Yet, this statute added nothing in regard to white men’s relations with black women without marriage, or for black women who bore mixed babies.