The following review appeared on the H-NET list for the study of
Southern women's history.  Because the book it discusses deals
specifically with Virginia's history, I thought I would share it with
the list.

--Jurretta Heckscher


H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (July 2006)

Lisa Lindquist Dorr. _White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in
Virginia, 1900-1960_. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2004. viii + 327 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $49.95 (cloth), ISBN
0-8078-2841-6; $19.95 (paper), ISBN 0-8078-5514-6.

Reviewed for H-SAWH by Jeremy Boggs, Department of History and Art
History, George Mason University

A New Look at the Southern Rape Myth

Lisa Lindquist Dorr challenges the typical narrative of black-on-white
rape in early twentieth-century Virginia.  While acknowledging that
Virginia was "not a bastion of racial equality," Dorr observes that a
white woman's accusation of rape by a black man did not inevitably mean
lynching and death for the accused.  Cases of black-on-white rape in
Virginia involved complicated relationships that hinged on conceptions
of race, class, and gender.

Dorr studied 288 cases from the court records of more than 60 Virginia
counties and cities.  She found that local contexts, reputation,
character, and place in community, for both blacks and whites, heavily
influenced the outcomes of cases of black-on-white rape.  These rape
cases, argues Dorr, exposed the contradictions of a society governed by
legal segregation.  While legal convictions of black men provided the
white community with a feeling of civilized superiority, white
solidarity across class and gender lines did not always follow.

Dorr's study focuses on cases involving charges of rape against black
men.  Out of the 288 cases she examined, 17 men were murdered by mob
violence and 230 men were "convicted of some crime," out of which 50
were executed.  Overall, 67 men out of the 288 (nearly 24 percent) in
this study were killed by either mob violence or state executions.
Dorr found that 48 men received maximum prison sentences, while 52 were
sentenced to five years or less.  Additionally, 35 cases were dismissed
or their defendants released.  Dorr provides these statistics not to
downplay the injustices suffered because of the myth of the "black
beast rapist," but to show that cases of black-on-white rape did not
all have the same outcome.

As Dorr points out, rape has historically been a crime in which the
victim is scrutinized in intense detail.  In cases of black-on-white
rape, however, the victim was almost immediately believed and the
assailant assumed guilty.  The myth of the "black beast rapist" grew
out of perceived threats from a free, politically empowered black
population after the Civil War.  Black-on-white rape, the embodiment of
the black rapist myth, threatened the patriarchal privileges possessed
by white men, privileges dependent upon perceived notions of white
femininity.  Specifically, the myth depended upon the idea that white
women were symbols of racial purity and virtue, and should be protected
chivalrously by white men.  The myth also depended upon the idea that
white women were sexually desirable.  Their "unattainability" and
"untouchability," argues Dorr, reaffirmed the South's racial and gender
order (p. 75).

As Dorr concludes, the myth did not always play out as expected in
local contexts. Indeed, the significance of Dorr's argument is that it
exposes the gulf between the rhetoric of the black rape myth and the
realities of Virginia communities' responses to cases of black-on-white
rape.

While only seventeen men in Dorr's study were lynched, the threat of
extralegal violence heavily influenced Virginia's black-on-white rape
trials.  For example, the threat of violence obviously influenced the
1912 case of Alfred White, a black man accused of rape by a white woman
named Bertha Ferguson.  Police heavily guarded White to deter lynching,
but the same police testified in court that if the trial took longer
than expected they could not guarantee White's safety.  Additionally,
newspapers frequently reported the restlessness and anger of members of
the public with regard to the case.  White's case, from accusation to
conviction, took less than three days and, despite an appeal by White's
attorney, ended in his execution two months later.  Dorr quite rightly
concludes, "there was little meaningful distinction between mob
violence and the legal process" for White (p. 17).

The larger story gleaned from White's case is that white Virginians
preferred legal solutions over extralegal violence, even though, as
Dorr demonstrates, the two were inextricably tied together.  Legal
prosecutions, Dorr argues, represented "civilized" responses to the
uncivil, "beastly" acts of black men, yet the threat of extralegal
violence encouraged court cases to proceed rapidly, and with swift
convictions.

Interestingly, Dorr observes that the "code of chivalry" only promised
retribution for black-on-white rape in the form of legal prosecution
and did not always involve protection from, or prevention of, rape.
Indeed, as Dorr demonstrates, legal retribution enabled white men to
regain some sense of superiority that was under threat by supposed
hypersexual black men and the strength of white women who thwarted
sexual attacks themselves.

Virginia courts would dismiss a rape case if a white man was in close
proximity to the assault.  "White officials," Dorr states "interpreted
the presence of an able-bodied white man during a reported assault as
strong evidence that no crime had in fact occurred" (p. 103).  The
inability of white men to protect white women from black men
represented a "double blow to their white masculinity" (p. 105).  In
cases of black-on-white rape, both parties involved--the accusing white
woman and the accused black man--indirectly exposed the flaws of white
masculine chivalry because they revealed instances in which white men
had not protected white women.

When white women sought redress in legal proceedings, which were
controlled by white men, the women turned over their agency in the
matter and reinforced white men's racial and patriarchal authority.
Often in these rape cases, questions about the reputation or character
of the woman involved influenced how black men were punished.  Class
held particular influence in black-on-white rape cases.  White women
who were part of poorer, less-reputable families sometimes saw their
accusations rebuffed.

The expressed _desire_ for white women by black men did not always
result in extreme punishment for the men, only the threat or presence
of _force_.  If a black man admitted curiosity about kissing or having
sex with a white woman, he was not inevitably given extreme punishment.
  In fact, as Dorr states, a black man's desire for a white woman both
threatened and reinforced the foundations of white supremacy.  Such
expressions of desire reinforced white ideas that blacks were
"naturally" more sexual and lustful than whites.  These declarations
also lent credence to the continued existence of a pedestal for elite
and middle-class white women.  At the same time, however, the expressed
desire of a black man for a white woman challenged the idea that white
men should have exclusive access to white women and threatened the
ideal of pure and virtuous white womanhood.

Dorr argues that character testimony by whites for black defendants in
rape cases did not circumvent Virginia's racial order but strengthened
it.  In these situations, whites often described blacks as humble,
faithful individuals who "knew their place" in the racial order.  In
the 1923 case of John Mays Jr., a seventeen-year-old black teenager
convicted of raping a seven-year-old white girl, Mays's employer, Dr.
A. A. Sizer, wrote several letters that testified to the good character
and integrity of Mays and his family.  Sizer also stated his opinion of
the poor character and reputation of the victim's family.  Though Mays
served seven years, the opinions of Dr. Sizer significantly helped
secure Mays's release.  Sizer's language questioned the "whiteness" of
the victim's family while confirming that Mays was not a threat to the
racial order.  Ironically, such character testimony helped guard the
racial order against "nuisance" blacks and unworthy whites.

In addition to reviewing white responses to black-on-white rape cases,
Dorr also looks at how Virginia's African-American community influenced
the outcomes of black-on-white rape cases.  In the last two chapters of
the book, Dorr discusses the ways in which black Virginians resisted
white supremacy or tempered its influence in the lives of African
Americans.  In some rape cases, black communities came to the defense
of an accused man by providing character testimony during the initial
trial and at subsequent hearings.  In other cases, the black community
provided alibis for accused black men.

Testimony that provided alibis, argues Dorr, challenged the
truthfulness of white women while providing legal officials outlets for
leniency when the whites involved were of disreputable character.
After the Second World War, the black community moved more forcefully
against prejudice as efforts to obtain "victory against fascism abroad"
impacted the fight "against racism at home" (pp. 208-209).  The black
press increasingly published articles about the untenable accusations
of rape by white women, which, combined with an increased awareness and
acceptance of female sexuality, worked to discredit the ideal of the
sanctity of southern womanhood.

Ultimately, Dorr observes, in rape cases historians can never know
precisely what happened between the accuser and the accused.  Often,
however, what actually happened was less important than what was
perceived to have happened and what kind of character and reputation
the parties involved possessed.  Black men were almost always convicted
of some crime when it involved sexual contact with a white woman, but
the fluidity of punishment after conviction indicates the variety of
ways in which gender, class, and race relations complicated Virginia's
segregated society.  Dorr does not question the power of the rape myth
in southern history, but she does show that the myth was far more
complex than previously thought.



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