The Fancy Girls Slave Trade: Sexual Exploitation and Commerce in American Slavery in New Orleans

The history of American slavery encompasses profound cruelty and

exploitation that extended beyond physical labor into the realm of

systematic sexual commerce. Within this dark chapter, the "fancy

girl" trade represents one of the most disturbing manifestations of

slavery's dehumanizing nature. This specialized market in New

Orleans and other Southern cities involved the deliberate buying and

selling of young, light-skinned enslaved women explicitly for sexual

exploitation, prostitution, and forced concubinage.