Black Fat, Fit Slave

This article demonstrates how two seemingly disparate published accounts—an 1844 slave advertisement by William M. Lambeth and an 1851 report by Samuel A. Cartwright—jointly index the entanglements between antifatness and antiblackness. By examining Lambeth’s expression of an ‘inclination to be fat,’ which I interpret as an anticipation of fatness underlying Cartwright’s report, I argue that this anticipation of fatness on the black body, characterized by an animal urge to overconsume and overindulge in vices of the flesh, reinforces the antiblack notion that the black is unfit for life, yet uniquely suited for slavery.