Rape and the Social Control of African Americans

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Rape and the Social Control of African Americans

• Sociology of Rape
• John Hamlin

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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

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Eugen D. GenoveseRoll, Jordan, Roll1976 1972

• Black Women were raped by
• Overseers
• Masters
• Other Slaves
• Institution of slavery frames all sexual relations

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Genovese (1976415)

• 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.

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(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.

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(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.

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(1976416)

• Fancy-girl
• Cost of slaves varied
• Blacksmiths - 2,500
• Prime field hands - 1,800
• Beautiful girl or young woman - 5,000

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

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(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

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(1976 34)

• Punishment for Rape was Death
• Castration declined but remained in Missouri into
  late antebellum period

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Willie MorrisNorth Toward Home (196779)

• 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.

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Post Civil War Until 1960s

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

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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

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Tool of Psychological Intimidation

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

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Hortense PowdermakerAfter Freedom A cultural
study in the Deep South (1938)

• Found that 65 of white respondents believed that
  sexual assault of white women justified lynching

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Major Court Cases

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

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(No Transcript)
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• 14 Years old
• Came from Chicago to small town for the summer
• Was lynched and mutilated for
• Whistling at a white woman

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(No Transcript)
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Kathleen M. BleeWomen of the Klan (199113-16)

• Klu Klux Klan
• Raped women, especially black women during raids
• Rumors of rape, lynching, sexual mutilation -
  used to intimidate and terrorize
• Protect white womanhood

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Jacquelyn Hall

• Maintains that lynching was used to establish a
  hierarchy among men
• Jessie Daniel Ames (1936)
• White men have said over and 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.

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Symbolic Importance

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

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

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Myth of the Black Rapists

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

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Justice (?) System

• Since 1930 to 1976, 453 men executed for rape,
  405 were black, almost all of the victims were
  white
• LeFree found rapes that were black men and white
  women remains seriously prosecuted
• Black offender on black victim declines black
  women cant get raped

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• Duluth Lynchings http//collections.mnhs.org/dulut
  hlynchings/