ARKANSAS HISTORICAL QUARTERLY, Volume 17 (Autumn 1958) p.217

"JUMPING THE BROOMSTICK": SLAVE MARRIAGE AND MORALITY IN ARKANSAS

By Orville W. Taylor*

Baptist College, Iwo, Nigeria

West Africa

"There were no valid marriages amongst that class [the slaves], in the slave states of America before their general emancipation near the close of the civil war, nor after that did any of the States take cognizance of marriages amongst slaves, until provisions were made by statute." (1) So wrote Justice James Eakin in rendering the decision of the Arkansas Supreme Court in the case of Gregley v. Jackson in 1882. Written nearly twenty years after the end of the slave era, Justice Eakin's statement was a correct appraisal of the status of slave marriage in Arkansas. Arkansas had no laws which stated specifically that slave marriages did not exist in the legal sense, but its citizens, most of whom had come from the older slave states, merely understood that a slave, like any other piece of property, had no right to enter into any sort of legal contract. Frequently, however, slaves went through some sort of marriage ceremony before living together.

Information disclosed in an Arkansas Supreme Court case in 1950 illustrates in considerable detail various aspects of slave marriage in Arkansas. (2) "Old Joe" Edwards was a slave of the Gant Family in Union County. Before 1850 he "married" Susan, a slave belonging to the Wroten family which lived six or eight miles away, in the traditional slave marriage ceremony called "jumping the broomstick." (3) From that time until about 1865, although the requirements of the slavery system prevented them from living together constantly, Joe and Susan regarded

____________________

*Winner of the 1958 Albert L. Shader Memorial Award of the Arkansas Historical Association

1 Gregley v. Jackson, in Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the Supreme Court of the State of Arkansas in Law and Equity (227 vols.; Little Rock, 1840-), 38, 490. Supreme Court cases will be cited hereafterin this manner: " Gregley v. Jackson , 38 Ark. 490."

2 Daniels v. Johnson, 374 Ark. 216. No citations will be made to individual portions of the case.

3 This ceremony evidently symbolized passage into domestic status.