The Black Widow of Hazel Green
Money, Murder and Scandal in the Antebellum South

In March 1855, Jacob, an enslaved man, was hanged in Huntsville, Alabama, for the attempted murder of a wealthy white planter. The rumors that ripped through town, however, were not about the killing but instead the confession: his enslaver Elizabeth Dale, the notorious “black widow of Hazel Green,” had forced him to commit the crime.

​A planter with economic independence unknown to most Southern women, Elizabeth had first come to cotton country as the wife of a young preacher, who died in 1830. Not one to dwell, Elizabeth became well-acquainted with the role of heartbroken widow—parlaying her charm into a succession of five new husbands as she transformed herself from pioneer to plantation mistress—and was not above, perhaps, sprinkling a dash of white powder over a meal to hasten a husband’s death.

Elizabeth Dale's decaying mansion in Hazel Green, Alabama, in the mid 20th century. Courtesy of HMCPL Special Collections.

Impressively assembling court records and archival documents, The Black Widow of Hazel Green tells the story of a fascinating yet repellant woman whose life and crimes uncannily mirror the larger violence and corrosion of the antebellum South's slave society.

​Forthcoming from Liveright, an imprint of W. W. Norton, in 2027.