Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019

Elizabeth Keye was an African American woman in colonial Virginia where she helped instigate a momentous act of legislation. Thomas Keye, a free white Englishman, impregnated Elizabeth’s mother, an enslaved Black woman.

After her father’s death she was sold to another landowner to finish her period of indentured servitude. As was common, her masters treated her differently than non-Black servants.

Elizabeth was then transferred to a third Englishman, who held her more than ten years longer than her contract stipulated. Her case was decided on July 31, 1656. She won with the help of William Grinsted, with whom she had a common-law marriage. Grinsted was also her child’s father.

In 1662 the courts decreed that children born to enslaved women would also be enslaved, regardless of the father’s race. Elizabeth knew she was embedded in a structure that could affect generations. Morgan writes that in the 21st century, Black women still suffer from the challenges of being able to “safely navigate the intrusion of the state into their reproductive autonomy” (41).

Tisby asks, “How exactly did Christianity in the United States become white? Of course we know that’s not the reality. To this day, Black people remain the most Christian demographic in the country” (43).