Questions

1. How does Winthrop Jordan explain white attitudes towards inter-racial sex? How have later historians responded to Jordan’s theories? What role did class play in shaping elite attitudes towards inter-racial sexual encounters?

2. Did white attitudes towards inter-racial sex change after the American civil war? Discuss the role of lynching in policing racial boundaries.

Readings

Question 1

Bardaglio, Peter, ‘Rape and the Law in the Old South: ‘Calculated to Excite Indignation in Every Heart’’, Journal of Southern History, vol. 60 (1994).

Bardaglio, Peter, ‘Shameful Matches: The Regulation of Interracial sex and marriage in the South pre 1900’, Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, ed. Martha Hodes (New York University Press, 1999).

Brown, Kathleen, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches and Anxious Patriarchs: Gender, Race and Power in Colonial Virginia, chapter 10: ‘Anxious Patriarchs’.

Burnham, Margaret, ‘An Impossible Marriage: Slave Law and Family Law’, Law and Inequality, vol. 5 (1987).

Bynum, Victoria, Unruly Women: the Politics of Social and Sexual Control in the Old South (Chapel Hill, 1992), chapter 2: ‘White Womanhood, Black Womanhood: Ideals and Realities in a Piedmont Slaveholding Society’, and chapter 4, ‘Punishing Deviant Women’.

Jordan, Winthrop, White over Black: American Attitudes Towards the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill, 1968), chapter 4: ‘Fruits of Passion’.

Lockley, Tim, ‘Crossing the Racial Divide: Interracial Sex in Antebellum Savannah’, Slavery and Abolition, 18 (December 1997), No 3, 159-173.

Pease, J. and W., Ladies, Women and Wenches. Choices and Constraint in Antebellum Charleston and Boston, University of North Carolina (1990), chapter 8: ‘The World of Wenches’.

Sommerville, Diane, ‘The Rape Myth in the Old South Reconsidered’, Journal of Southern History, vol. 61 (1995), pp. 480-518.

Abolitionist discourse

Boucicault, Dion, ‘The Octoroon’ [1859], in Plays, Cambridge University Press (Cambridge, 1984).

Saillant, John, ‘The Black Body Erotic and the Republican Body Politic, 1790-1820’, Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 5:3 (1995).

Walters, Roland, ‘The Erotic South: Civilisation and Sexuality in American Abolitionism’, American Quarterly, vol. 25 (1973), pp. 177-201.

Question 2

Bardaglio, Peter W., “Shameful Matches”: The Regulation Of Interracial Sex And Marriage In The South Before 1900’ in Martha Hodes (ed), Sex, Love, Race. Crossing Boundaries In North American History (New York and London, 1999), pp. 112 - 138.

Brundage, W. Fitzhugh, ed., Under Sentence of Death: Lynching in the South, University of North Carolina Press (Chapel Hill, 1997).

Cardyn, Lisa, ‘Sexualised Racism/Gendered Violence: Outraging the Body Politic in the Reconstruction South’, Michigan Law Review, vol. 11:4 (2002).

Dailey, Jane, ‘The Limits Of Liberalism In The New South: The Politics Of Race, Sex And Patronage In Virginia, 1879 – 1883’ in Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Bryant Simo (eds), Jumpin’ Jim Crow. Southern Politics From Civil War To Civil Rights (Princeton and Oxford, 2000), pp. 88–114.

Downey, Dennis and Raymond Hyser, No Crooked Death: Coatesville, Pennsylvania and the Lynching of Zachariah Walker, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, 1991).

Dunlap, Leslie K., ‘The Reform Of Rape Law And The Problem Of White Men. Age –Of-Consent Campaigns In The South, 1885 – 1910’ in Martha Hodes (ed), Sex, Love, Race. Crossing Boundaries In North American History (New York and London, 1999), p. 352 - 372.

Escott, Paul D., and David R. Goldfield (eds), Major Problems In The History Of The American South, Volume 1: The Old South. Documents And Essays (Lexington and Toronto, 1990), pp. 537-42, 576-90.

Fink, Leon (ed), Major Problems In The Gilded Age And The Progressive Era. Documents And Essays (Lexington and Toronto, 1993), pp. 116-23, 167-74, 232-59.

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth, Gender And Jim Crow. Women And The Politics Of White Supremacy In North Carolina, 1896-1920 (Chapel Hill, 1996).

Godshalk, David F., ‘William J. Northern’s Public And Personal Struggles Against Lynching’ in Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Bryant Simon (eds), Jumpin’ Jim Crow. Southern Politics From Civil War To Civil Rights (Princeton and Oxford, 2000), pp. 140 - 161.

Hodes, Martha, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the 19th-Century South (Yale University Press, 1997).

Jackson, Kenneth T., The Ku Klux Klan In The City 1915 –1930 (New York, 1967).

Kantrowitz, Stephen, ‘One Man’s Mob Is Another Man’s Militia: Violence, Manhood, And Authority In Reconstruction South Carolina’ in Jane Dailey, Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Bryant Simon (eds), Jumpin’ Jim Crow. Southern Politics From Civil War To Civil Rights (Princeton and Oxford, 2000), pp. 67 - 87.

Kathy Peiss, ed., Major Problems in the History of American Sexuality, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, 2002), pp. 153-8.

McGovern, James, Anatomy of a Lynching: The Killing of Claude Neal, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, 1982).

NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People], Thirty Years of Lynching in the United States, 1889-1918, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (New York, 1919).

Nelson, Scott, ‘Livestock, Boundaries And Public Space In Spartanburg. African American Men, Elite White Women, And The Spectacle Of Conjugal Relations’ in Martha Hodes (ed), Sex, Love, Race. Crossing Boundaries In North American History (New York and London, 1999), p. 313 -329.

Richardson, Heather Cox, The Death Of Reconstruction. Race, Labor, And Politics In The Post-Civil War North, 1865-1901 (Cambridge and London, 2001).

Rosen, Hannah, ‘“Not That Sort Of Woman”. Race, Gender And Sexual Violence During The Memphis Riot of 1866’ in Martha Hodes (ed), Sex, Love, Race. Crossing Boundaries In North American History (New York and London, 1999), pp. 267-293.

Shapiro, Herbert, White Violence And Black Response. From Reconstruction To Montgomery (Amherst, 1988), Chapters 1-2.

Smead, Howard, Blood Justice: The Lynching of Mack Charles Parker, Oxford University Press (New York, 1986).

Wells, Ida B., On Lynchings; Southern Horrors; A Red Record; Mob Rule In New Orleans (North Stratford, 2002 [1892]).

White, Walter, Rope And Faggot. A Biography Of Judge Lynch (Notre Dame, 2001 [1929]).