While enslaved people could not legally marry, they developed their own commitment rituals and family cultures. Evidence of male-male and female-female bonds appears in various forms:
The history of same-sex intimacy and romantic storylines among enslaved people is a burgeoning field of study that moves beyond the traditional focus on heteronormative family structures. Scholars are increasingly "queering" the archive, finding evidence of same-sex desire and deep emotional bonds in slave narratives, court records, and colonial observations. Historical Evidence of Romantic Relationships naked gay sex slaves
In his autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom , Frederick Douglass describes a "band of brothers" as being profoundly loving, which some scholars interpret as a form of homoerotic affiliation. While enslaved people could not legally marry, they
Recent scholarship emphasizes that sexuality was a "core terrain of struggle" between enslavers and the enslaved. and colonial observations.