Slave masters, their sons and overseers often preyed on their female slaves. Georgia instituted the death penalty for any man of color who raped a white woman. But white men who raped black women were not considered criminals; such assaults were not deemed crimes under Georgia’s criminal code. No one knows what happened to Melvinia, but given the frequency of sexual assaults against enslaved women at the time, it is quite likely that she was raped. However, the descendants of Melvinia’s slave owners – and some of her own descendants – hope that there was some affection between Melvinia and the white man who fathered her child. Melvinia continued to have biracial children as a free woman, after slavery was over. She also continued to live close to the Shields family and to the man who fathered her son years after slavery ended. We will never know whether there was any affection between the two of them, or whether she stayed because she was brutalized and too terrified to leave or because she was dependent on his financial support.