Rape & Race in the Nineteenth-century South

Diane Miller Sommerville

Univ of North Carolina Press, 2004 - History - 411 pages

Challenging notions of race and sexuality presumed to have originated and flourished in the slave South, Diane Miller Sommerville traces the evolution of white southerners' fears of black rape by examining actual cases of black-on-white rape throughout the nineteenth century.



Sommerville demonstrates that despite draconian statutes, accused black rapists frequently avoided execution or castration, largely due to intervention by members of the white community. This leniency belies claims that antebellum white southerners were overcome with anxiety about black rape. In fact, Sommerville argues, there was great fluidity across racial and sexual lines as well as a greater tolerance among whites for intimacy between black males and white females. According to Sommerville, pervasive misogyny fused with class prejudices to shape white responses to accusations of black rape even during the Civil War and Reconstruction periods, a testament to the staying power of ideas about poor women's innate depravity.



Based predominantly on court records and supporting legal documentation, Sommerville's examination forces a reassessment of long-held assumptions about the South and race relations as she remaps the social and racial terrain on which southerners -- black and white, rich and poor -- related to one another over the long nineteenth century.

Contents

• INTRODUCTION: iii
• NOT SO HEINOUS AS AT FIRST MIGHT BE SUPPOSED Slave Rape Gender and Class in Old South Communities: 5
• A MANIFEST DISTINCTION BETWEEN A WOMAN AND A FEMALE CHILD Rape Law Children and the Antebellum South: 28
• HE SHALL SUFFER DEATH BlackonWhite Rape Law in the Early South: 58
• THE VERY HELPLESSNESS OF THE ACCUSED APPEALS TO OUR SYMPATHY Rape Race and Southern Appellate Law: 72
• AGAINST ALL ODDS? Free Blacks on Trial for Rape in the Antebellum South: 88
• RARELY KNOWN TO VIOLATE A WHITE WOMAN Slave Rape in Civil WarEra Virginia: 106
• OUR JUDICIARY SYSTEM IS A FARCE Remapping the Legal Landscape of Rape in the PostEmancipation South: 133
• FOUL DAUGHTER OF RECONSTRUCTION? Black Rape in the Reconstruction South: 162
• THE OLD THREADBARE LIE The Rape Myth and Alternatives to Lynching: 186
• EPILOGUE: 205
• RAPE RACE AND RHETORIC The Rape Myth in Historiographical Perspective: 209
• NOTES: 247
• BIBLIOGRAPHY: 335
• INDEX: 381

About the author

Diane Miller Sommerville is associate professor of history at Binghamton University, State University of New York.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Rape & Race in the Nineteenth-century South; Rape & Race in the Nineteenth-century South, Diane Miller Sommerville
• Author: Diane Miller Sommerville
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press, 2004
• ISBN: 080785560X, 9780807855607
• Length: 411 pages
• Subjects: History / Americas (North, Central, South, West Indies); History / Social History; History / United States / 19th Century; History / United States / State & Local / South (AL, AR, FL, GA, KY, LA, MS, NC, SC, TN, VA, WV); Law / Legal History; Psychology / Human Sexuality; Social Science / Criminology; Social Science / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies; Social Science / Cultural & Ethnic Studies / General; Social Science / Minority Studies; Social Science / Violence in Society; Social Science / Women's Studies