Interracial Relationships in 19th Century South: White Women & Black Men - Historical Study of Forbidden Love in Antebellum America | Perfect for History Classes & Social Justice Discussions
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Interracial Relationships in 19th Century South: White Women & Black Men - Historical Study of Forbidden Love in Antebellum America | Perfect for History Classes & Social Justice Discussions
$21
$28
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SKU: 55060966
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Description
"[A] fascinating survey of interracial relationships in the South between the 1680s and the 1880s. . . . Enthralling."—David Nicholson, Washington Post This award-winning book is the first to explore the history of a powerful category of illicit sex in America’s past: liaisons between Southern white women and black men. Martha Hodes tells a series of stories about such liaisons in the years before the Civil War, explores the complex ways in which white Southerners tolerated them in the slave South, and shows how and why these responses changed with emancipation. Hodes provides details of the wedding of a white servant-woman and a slave man in 1681, an antebellum rape accusation that uncovered a relationship between an unmarried white woman and a slave, and a divorce plea from a white farmer based on an adulterous affair between his wife and a neighborhood slave. Drawing on sources that include courtroom testimony, legislative petitions, pardon pleas, and congressional testimony, she presents the voices of the authorities, eyewitnesses, and the transgressors themselves—and these voices seem to say that in the slave South, whites were not overwhelmingly concerned about such liaisons, beyond the racial and legal status of the children that were produced. Only with the advent of black freedom did the issue move beyond neighborhood dramas and into the arena of politics, becoming a much more serious taboo than it had ever been before. Hodes gives vivid examples of the violence that followed the upheaval of war, when black men and white women were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and unprecedented white rage and terrorism against such liaisons began to erupt. An era of terror and lynchings was inaugurated, and the legacy of these sexual politics lingered well into the twentieth century.
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Reviews
*****
Verified Buyer
5
The book does absolutely make one think (or better--realize) that the 'Old Days' were not necessarily the 'Best Days.'As I was reading the book, I could not help but think of color as being 'everything.'Considering that the 'white' skin was an item of power for the woman, it is indeed fascinating as to what would motivate the white women described in the book to love a 'negro' man. Especially, if that 'negro' man was a slave. I would like to believe the white 'ladies' (yes, I use that word) knew what the 'position' the man held in society. And I would like to believe the ladies knew what 'position' she would now hold in society. Thus, some of the tragic events described in the book.I did like the chronological flow of the book and the reference back to earlier times as was warranted when coming to the end of the nineteenth century (nearly modern times).Of course, a subject like this would have to be absolutely rigorously researched. And, it does appear that Ms. Hodes really did her job in that respect.I will admit to being surprised that it was not until the immediate run-up and after the Civil War that 'automatic' murder/lynching of black men occrred with impunity. I had thought that there was 'automatic' lynching of any black man that 'knew' a white woman.It is too bad that we do not have a fuller record of the 'voiceless' men.As I was reading the book and referring to the notes, I could not help but think just kind of courage it took to cross color 'lines.'No matter what, it does seem that sex, lust, and love (the order is deliberate) is just something that cannot be legislated, beat, or murdered away.Reading the book certainly had me thinking about what 'freedom' means. Depictions of idyllic times in the 'Old Days' certainly needs at the very least more consideration. We all would do well to take a 'hard' look at the 'Old Days' -- no matter who.The book is certainly more than a worthy excursion into subject matter that is fraught with 'landmines' (political, moral, etc).
