Celia, a Slave Case

Celia's story is a slave crime incident that has made out of the thousands of other stories and has made its way through Harper and Collins Publishing and into the hands of readers. There are numerous accounts of slaves being mistreated and some, like Celia, being used for sex, during the 1800's but very few had a voice like Celia's. The author Melton McLaurin is from South Carolina, which is odd because this story takes place in a small town in Missouri. McLaurin grew up in the last generation to witness segregation, which is why I think he had strong ties to African American rights. In his research he probably came across dozens of stories similar to Celia's, but what I wanted to know was why it stood out to him among the rest. It is interesting to think that among hundreds of other cases like Celia's, why had McLaurin chose this story? Perhaps, it is because there is more evidence and facts in which this story is based on. But even in the book there were a few keen facts that had never been discovered. Yes, they are meaningless but if he didn't have every single fact, then why write about this one specific case at all?

The answer is simple, this is probably the most information about trials involving slaves than anyone could probably ever find. Because at that time no one cared to record slave trials because to them, they were worthless. Why waste someone's time and effort on a person that isn't even a person? Records of slaves were rarely kept let alone, those of criminals. In the 1850's the primary concern of the country was the gold rush, popular sovereignty and enforcing fugitive slave laws. Because of this, the records of a slaves in the middle of the United States, whose trial was severely insignificant at the time, might be difficult to find, especially when you think about all of the other factors and important things that American's were occupied with. I cannot believe how much detail McLaurin gets for this story, but it is a substantial amount and it definitely gets the job done quite adequately.

When this trial took place Missourians were used to the implications of slavery being taken to into debate since the case of Missouri being a free or slave state had been a quite a significant case when Missouri joined the union. Once Missouri announced itself as a slave state, the slaves in Missouri had no rights. The ones that had morally kind owner's, were the lucky ones who had who were allowed to be looked upon as part of the family in some cases. In Celia's case, this was not the situation. Celia was bought for one thing, and one thing only, sex.

Robert Newsom purchased Celia to fill the hole in his heart that he felt after his wife had died. Celia, to his utter disappointment did not fill that hole. So he kept using her and using her trying to achieve some peace of mind but was never given that satisfaction. Before long Celia had started to resent and hated him as much as she probably hated the thought of slavery itself.

Robert knew what he was doing, but was so blind with emptiness and turmoil that he didn't care that his actions were causing Celia emotional harm. Celia, being bought as a 14 year old girl and being used as a sex slave for five years had so much emotional damage that had been accumulated that one cannot blame her for wanting to kill him. After five years she had had enough, and upon approaching Newsome in a mature fashion about the situation, he had grown so accustomed to Celia taking care of him that he didn't think twice about it. Newsome being the man that he was, thought that his action were perfectly alright in account that he owned Celia and she did not have a voice of opinion to say other wise. So it is safe to say that he thought that he could do anything he wanted to Celia because she was black and she was his property.

He had it coming, and Celia had even warned him not to try to take advantage of her again. But because of his arrogance he neglected her warnings and walked into a death trap. Newsome could have gone about things much differently and much more kindly, but he had already grown accustomed to Celia's acceptance of the situation so that on the night of June 23, 1855 he thought that his requests were not such a big deal. He approached Celia and did not give up even after she retreated to a dark corner. He was then was killed by two blows to the head with a stick. This is the only witnessing that we have of the event, whether or not it was true, who is to say?

But if Celia had enough force to strike Robert dead with a second blow, I can say with quite certainty that she knew what she was doing. If she had hit him and he was still reaching for her then she was well aware of what she was doing. She knew that with that second blow she had to kill him and that she wanted to kill him. This is why the story falls short, because we are supposed to write about how the trial is unfair. The trial wasn't "unfair" at the time because during the time period, slaves were known to be extremely inferior to there white counterparts. The judge and jury did not see this as an act of self-defense but an act of hatred and anger towards slave owner's superiority to African Americans. This case takes place during a time that it was looked upon as an act of hatred and Robert Newsome was killed because Celia despised him.

But this generation sees the story quite differently. We see it as Celia was defending herself from sexual assault from her master. Today we see it as Robert Newsome was the bad guy and Celia was the innocent victim. But the point that I am trying to express here is that in 1855 Celia was seen as the crazy murderer - even though it was brought on by assault - while Robert Newsome is looked upon as a respected slave owning Missourian. The act of raping ones slaves was quite common back then, simply because the mindset of the slave owners saw their slaves as property and not as humans. So they thought that they could do anything that they wanted to them without it being looked upon shamefully.

In the 1850's and even today it is easy to obtain preconceived notions about people based on their race, background, religion or wealth. Today we see it more as wealth based, but back then it was primarily based on race. Then, if you were white it became a matter of wealth but as for slaves, if you were black you didn't really matter to anyone. That's why, with a jury of all white males from Missouri, Celia's case is considered unjust. If she had been given a jury of one female and then all males I think that the prosecution would have been different. Even if if there was a black male as part of the jury with the jury still containing all males the situation might have been very different. But the point