The drawing in the book was extraordinary. I recognized the venue immediately as the steps in front of the Old Exchange and Provost Dungeon on Bay Street, first built in the 1770s as the customs house for the Port of Charleston. Now a museum, the exterior has changed little over the years, although everything around it has changed.
The plaque in front of the building identified it as the site of **** sales, so it was not surprising to see a drawing from the Antebellum period showing a **** auction taking place on the raised porch in front of the building. Knowing the cruelty of the peculiar institution, and the shameful way my ancestors were treated, it was not altogether surprising to see the whites gathered around a group of black slaves who had been stripped entirely naked for the buyers. Their naked black bodies seemed to glisten in the sunlight, and I wondered if they had been rubbed down with palm oil or cottonseed oil prior to their sale, as per the customs of the time.
The wretched slaves looked quite humiliated to be displayed this way, and many looked as if they had tears in their eyes, even as the evil white faces around them, surveying their shameful nudity, beamed with greedy pleasure. Knowing the history of slavery in Charleston, and having spent an evening in the odious company of Charles Manton dining at High Cotton, less than two blocks from the Old Exchange, the obvious pleasure the whites took in humiliating the blacks did not shock me. Indeed, several times during our elegant dinner I felt his eyes roam over my body in a way that made me feel as if he'd very much enjoy seeing me naked on the auction block in front of Charleston's white elite.
The irony of the location was not lost on me. The steps of the grand building was where the Declaration of Independence was read to the people for the fist time. It was where the ratifying convention for the Constitution was held. And it was the platform upon which naked blacks were paraded for the amusement of the white planters, and any passerby's who paused to gawk at them.
I wasn't surprised that my daughter had chose to pleasure herself why studying this emotionally charged scene. My daughter and I were both well educated, successful black women. Any white man who dared to say the "N" word in our presence at the University would find themselves fired, expelled, and cancelled. The fantasy of being stripped of our status, educational achievements, and even our clothes was unthinkable, which is why it was so powerfully erotic. The thought of being paraded like livestock while elegantly dressed whites perused our oiled black bodies triggered an immediate stirring between my legs.
By far the most shocking element of the drawing was that it wasn't a naked black woman who was standing on the center of the platform, but a naked white! She had shoulder length blonde hair, elegantly curled and her pretty, delicate face was a mask of horror and humiliation. Like the blacks, she appeared to have been oiled, and the auctioneer smiled broadly as he used the whip to point out the finer points of her naked body.
The caption provided the only clue: "Sarah Harrison, of Member of Boston's Daughter's of Liberty, is found to be of negro blood and is auctioned at The Exchange House, Charlestown, 1832."
I understood my daughter's excitement. The idea of being sold off the auction block as a black **** girl was exciting, but the idea of being sold beside a white abolitionist was next level! To not only enjoy and hate my own humiliation but hers as well, created a wellspring of submission, vengeance, and excitement I couldn't contain. I squeezed my thighs together as my brain tried to process what I was feeling!
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