ABSTRACT
This chapter will increase our understanding of Islam in the United States generally as well as the roles of race and gender in the commodification of enslaved women’s bodies. My research will attempt to document enslaved women named “Fatima” from the early eighteenth century until the Civil War. It will serve as an empirical and methodological experiment. Incidental evidence exists that Founders such as George Washington and the powerful Pinckney clan in South Carolina, one of whom signed the Constitution, owned women slaves named Fatima. Beyond these brief references and those that appear in runaway slave advertisements, a pressing question remains: How do new databases devoted to the slave trade and slave petitions of ownership and sale enhance the construction of a historical presence for enslaved Muslim women? What, beyond the mere demographics of their existence, can be learned from them? Conversely, what cannot be known? Do these references provide insight into the individuality and agency of these Black and Muslim women? Already, I have located two instances from slave petitions in which women named Fatima either were manumitted or found legal means by which to manumit themselves. This chapter opens the door to the possibility of gathering enough evidence to propose the construction of a new database exclusively for Muslim enslaved women.
