Finding Enslaved and Free(d) People in Narratives of Early American Sexual Violence

This dataset was created from a collection of over nine hundred incidents of sexual violence identified in the mainland North American British colonies and early United States from 1700-1820. Gathered from legal, manuscript, and print records in twenty archives, it identifies over four hundred individuals who were enslaved, of African descent, and/or of Native American descent. This collection offers unique historical evidence about individuals who may not appear in any other extant records. Significantly, it reveals how enslaved and free(d) Black and Indigenous people both addressed and were involved in incidents of sexual violence, revealing how communities of color are far more visible in historical records than has been traditionally recognized.