   Cooper not only highlights the discontinuity between religion, faith, reason, and conscience on the one hand and the atrocities of slavery on the other, she also exposes the white male slave owner as a rapist who fathers children by Black female slaves and then exploits the labor of those children who must assume the slave status of their mothers. This is a constant point of emphasis by Cooper not only because of its prevalence during and after slavery, but also because of her own her lived experience. Added to all of this is the problem of lynching—adeptly described by Ida B. Wells-Barnett as “Our National Crime”.