{"id":19280,"date":"2026-05-07T16:06:12","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T16:06:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/?p=19280"},"modified":"2026-05-07T16:07:12","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T16:07:12","slug":"a-terrible-intimacy-interracial-life-in-the-slaveholding-south-by-melvin-patrick-ely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/07\/a-terrible-intimacy-interracial-life-in-the-slaveholding-south-by-melvin-patrick-ely\/","title":{"rendered":"A Terrible Intimacy: Interracial Life in the Slaveholding South by Melvin Patrick Ely"},"content":{"rendered":"

c.2026, Henry Holt\u00a0 <\/strong>
\n$31.99\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>
\n368 pages<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Terri Schlichenmeyer<\/strong>
\nThe Truth Contributor<\/strong><\/p>\n

Time served.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve ever faced a judge in a courtroom, that\u2019s what you hope to hear. A few hours in a concrete room, maybe an uncomfortable overnight, done.<\/em> It\u2019s not fun, it might be embarrassing, but it\u2019s over and you move on, chastised. Unless, as in the new book A Terrible Intimacy<\/em> by Melvin Patrick Ely,<\/strong> time served was a lifetime.<\/p>\n

When you think about slavery, the image of large fields and entire households full of enslaved people probably comes to mind.<\/p>\n

That, says Ely, isn\u2019t the whole story. In the years prior to the Civil War, he says, roughly \u201cone-quarter of America\u2019s enslaved people lived on large plantations with fifty or more forced laborers\u2026\u201d Another 25 percent dwelt on smaller plantations with slightly fewer enslaved people.<\/p>\n

The rest \u2013\u00a0 about half of this country\u2019s enslaved people – lived on small farmsteads; in fact, households that held five or fewer enslaved people \u201cwere very numerous.\u201d<\/p>\n

This, Ely says, meant that slaveholders were very familiar with those they held in bondage, and they likely knew those held by their neighbors. They might have attended church with enslaved people, or sought medical help from a enslaved Black doctor.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrade across racial lines was frequent,\u201d he says, \u201cshared recreation not rare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such \u201cintimacy\u201d sometimes led to looser rules for enslaved people. It also led to a surprise: \u201cAn enslaved person charged with a crime in Virginia, and in the South generally, would have had legal representation\u201d in the case of an alleged crime.<\/p>\n

A Black man named Tom, for example, was accused of killing an overseer in a fight – but was the fight cloaked in a whole other matter? Nancy Morgan was viciously murdered by a \u201cnegro\u201d named Solomon \u2013 or was she nothing more than \u201ca wayward, shiftless pauper\u201d? Mary Tatum accused George of rape. Was it a case of mistaken identity?<\/p>\n

And when Hillery Richardson was mortally wounded by William, the jury had to decide: who was really the victim?<\/p>\n

So you say you\u2019re a big fan of mysteries. Nothing like a good whodunit, right? Then check out A Terrible Intimacy<\/em> and see if it doesn\u2019t fit just perfectly.<\/p>\n

Because it will. Reading author Melvin Patrick Ely\u2019s work is like having Matlock on the sofa by you, and Easy Rawlins next to her. It\u2019s part courtroom procedural, with a historical angle that Ely is studiously careful to explain, and the kind of excitement you\u2019d expect from life-or-death testimonies, a few shockers, and some heartbreak. Readers will clearly understand Ely\u2019s obvious excitement in teasing apart these tales \u2013 they are, after all, things that happened to real people in real court cases, presented with a shared knowledge of 19th-century vocabulary and slang, culture, and with filled-in-the-blanks for deeper understanding. If you feel like a real sleuth while you\u2019re reading, you\u2019re not far off.<\/p>\n

This is a book well-told by a great storyteller, and if you\u2019re a fan of courtroom-thriller novels or historical events, you won\u2019t be sorry to find it. Start A Terrible Intimacy<\/em> and it will serve you well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

c.2026, Henry Holt\u00a0 $31.99\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 368 pages By Terri Schlichenmeyer The Truth Contributor Time served. If you\u2019ve ever faced a judge in a courtroom, that\u2019s what you hope to hear. A few hours in a concrete room, maybe an uncomfortable overnight, done. It\u2019s not fun, it might be embarrassing, but it\u2019s over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":19282,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"wf_post_folders":[20],"class_list":["post-19280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book_review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19280"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19281,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19280\/revisions\/19281"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19280"},{"taxonomy":"wf_post_folders","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.thetruthtoledo.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/wf_post_folders?post=19280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}