A troubling, and complicated story of Julia Ann Chinn, the enslaved wife of Richard Mentor Johnson, US VP for Martin Van Buren.
The Republican Party member also referred to as the Jeffersonian Republican Party among other names, Johnson never freed Chinn, but during his frequent absences from his estate, he delegated to her the management of his property, including Choctaw Academy, a boarding school for Indigenous men and boys on the grounds of the estate. This meant that Chinn, although enslaved herself, oversaw Blue Spring's slave labor force and had substantial control over economic, social, financial, and personal affairs within the couple's world. The mixed-race Chinn's relationship with Johnson was unlikely to have been a consensual one since she was never released from slavery.
Chinn's life was exceptional in the power that Johnson invested in her, the opportunities the couple's relationship afforded her and her daughters, and their community's tacit acceptance of the family up to a point.
When the family left their farm, they faced steep limits: pews at the rear of the church, burial in separate graveyards, exclusion from town dances, and more. Johnson's relationship with Chinn ruined his political career and Myers compellingly demonstrates that it wasn't interracial sex that led to his downfall but his refusal to keep it and Julia Chinn behind closed doors. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVX5ds6hZB8&t=464s