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Rape and the Social Control of African Americans

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Title: Rape and the Social Control of African Americans


1
Rape and the Social Control of African Americans
  • Sociology of Rape
  • John Hamlin

2
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

3
Eugen D. GenoveseRoll, Jordan, Roll1976 1972
  • Black Women were raped by
  • Overseers
  • Masters
  • Other Slaves
  • Institution of slavery frames all sexual relations

4
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.

5
(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.

6
(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.

7
(1976416)
  • Fancy-girl
  • Cost of slaves varied
  • Blacksmiths - 2,500
  • Prime field hands - 1,800
  • Beautiful girl or young woman - 5,000

8
  • House servants with special services required
    for
  • Wealthiest planters or
  • Unmarried sons

9
(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

10
(1976 34)
  • Punishment for Rape was Death
  • Castration declined but remained in Missouri into
    late antebellum period

11
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.

12
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!

13
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

14
Tool of Psychological Intimidation
  • Central to Race Relations
  • Designed to control the behavior of all blacks
  • Trying to maintain the social order

15
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

16
Major Court Cases
  • Scottsboro - 1931
  • Nine tried for rape of two white women
  • Willie Mcgee - 1951
  • Executed
  • Emmett Till - 1955

17
(No Transcript)
18
  • 14 Years old
  • Came from Chicago to small town for the summer
  • Was lynched and mutilated for
  • Whistling at a white woman

19
(No Transcript)
20
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

21
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.

22
Symbolic Importance
  • Leering laws equated staring with rape
  • As it worked out, less than a quarter of lynch
    victims were accused of rape

23
  • However, they received the most attention and
    publicity, newspapers would write about lynchings
    that were going to happen

24
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

25
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

26
  • Duluth Lynchings http//collections.mnhs.org/dulut
    hlynchings/
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