73 pages • 2 hours read
Keisha N. Blain, ed., Ibram X. Kendi, ed.A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Elizabeth Keye was an African American woman in colonial Virginia where she helped instigate a momentous act of legislation. Thomas Keye, a free white Englishman, impregnated Elizabeth’s mother, an enslaved Black woman.
After her father’s death she was sold to another landowner to finish her period of indentured servitude. As was common, her masters treated her differently than non-Black servants.
Elizabeth was then transferred to a third Englishman, who held her more than ten years longer than her contract stipulated. Her case was decided on July 31, 1656. She won with the help of William Grinsted, with whom she had a common-law marriage. Grinsted was also her child’s father.
In 1662 the courts decreed that children born to enslaved women would also be enslaved, regardless of the father’s race. Elizabeth knew she was embedded in a structure that could affect generations. Morgan writes that in the 21st century, Black women still suffer from the challenges of being able to “safely navigate the intrusion of the state into their reproductive autonomy” (41).
Tisby asks, “How exactly did Christianity in the United States become white? Of course we know that’s not the reality. To this day, Black people remain the most Christian demographic in the country” (43).
African American Literature
View Collection
American Civil War
View Collection
Black History Month Reads
View Collection
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Books on U.S. History
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Equality
View Collection
Essays & Speeches
View Collection
New York Times Best Sellers
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection