Rape and the Social Control of African Americans

Rape and the Social Control of African Americans Sociology of Rape John Hamlin

Pre-Civil War South • Race Relations in General North/South • Black Women Considered Property • Very complicated issue • Not treated the same every where • Human but not

Eugen D. Genovese Roll, Jordan, Roll 1976 [1972] • Black Women were raped by • Overseers • Masters • Other Slaves • Institution of slavery frames all sexual relations

Genovese (1976: 415) • “To risk some generalizations: (1) Enough violations of black women occurred on the plantations to constitute a scandal and make life hell for a discernable minority of black women and their men.

(continued) • (2) Much of the plantation miscegenation occurred with single girls under circumstances that varied from seduction to rape and typically fell between the two. (3) Married black women and their men did not take white sexual aggression lightly and resisted effectively enough to hold it to a minimum.

(Continued) • (4) Most of the miscegenation in the South occurred in the towns and cities, not on the plantations or even farms. With all these qualifications, miscegenation had a profound and in some respects devastating effect on southern life. ”

(1976: 416) • • • “Fancy-girl” Cost of slaves varied Blacksmiths - $2, 500 Prime field hands - $1, 800 Beautiful girl or young woman $5, 000

• House servants with special services required for: • Wealthiest planters or • Unmarried sons

(1976: 33 -34) • Rape was rape of white women • The rape of black women did not exist in law • Black on black rape was handled by the master • Trials of black offenders seemed fair • Public opinion was calm, few lynched

(1976: 34) • Punishment for Rape was Death • Castration declined but remained in Missouri into late antebellum period

Willie Morris North Toward Home (1967: 79) • I knew all about the sexual act, but not until I was twelve years old did I know that it was performed with white women for pleasure; I had thought that only Negro women engaged in the act of love with white men just for fun, because they were the only ones with the animal desire to submit that way.

Post Civil War Until 1960 s • Rape was used as social control of blacks by lynching men (Ida Wells) • In the last two decades of the 1800 s there were 1, 540 lynchings (most black) compared to 1, 214 executions • Declined through 20 th century but until WWI the average never fell below 2 or 3 a week!

Antebellum - Emancipation • Lynchings were setup as the protection of white womanhood against the “Monstrous Beast, crazed with lust” • From 1840 -1860 only 300 lynched, about 10% were black

Tool of Psychological Intimidation • Central to Race Relations • Designed to control the behavior of all blacks • Trying to maintain the social order

Hortense Powdermaker After Freedom: A cultural study in the Deep South (1938) • Found that 65% of white respondents believed that sexual assault of white women justified lynching

The Clansman • Written in 1905, middle of three books By Thomas Dixon • Portrayal of a white girl and mother raped by blacks. They committed suicide because of the shame • Birth of a Nation

Major Court Cases • Scottsboro - 1931 • Nine tried for rape of two white women • Willie Mcgee - 1951 • Executed • Emmett Till - 1955

• 14 Years old • Came from Chicago to small town for the summer • Was lynched and mutilated for • Whistling at a white woman

Kathleen M. Blee Women of the Klan (1991: 13 -16) • Klux Klan • Raped women, especially black women during raids • Rumors of rape, lynching, sexual mutilation - used to intimidate and terrorize • Protect white womanhood

Jacquelyn Hall • Maintains that lynching was used to establish a hierarchy among men • Jessie Daniel Ames (1936) • “White men have said over and we have believed it because it was repeated so often - that not only was there no such thing as a chaste negro women - but that a negro woman could not be assaulted, that it was never against her will. ”

Symbolic Importance • Leering laws equated staring with rape • As it worked out, less than a quarter of lynch victims were accused of rape

• However, they received the most attention and publicity, newspapers would write about lynchings that were going to happen

Myth of the Black Rapists • 1950 s and 1960 s rape reports in the paper were much more likely to look at black offender and white victim cases; during the 1960 s the NYT printed 249 articles on rape, 49% were identified as racially oriented, 90% of those were black offender and white victim

Justice (? ) System • Since 1930 to 1976, 453 men executed for rape, 405 were black, almost all of the victims were white • Le. Free found rapes that were black men and white women remains seriously prosecuted • Black offender on black victim declines; black women can’t get raped

• Duluth Lynchings http: //collections. mnhs. org/duluthl ynchings/