White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (Hardcover)

by Martha Hodes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
White Women, Black Men is a fascinating study of a category of interracial relationships that conventional wisdom has held did not exist: liaisons (the term author Martha Hodes prefers) between black men and white women in the antebellum South. Hodes shows how such relationships were tolerated, though not encouraged, to a surprising degree before the Civil War. In a fascinating feat of historical detective work, she uses court documents and other records in cases involving racial status, rape, divorce, and property, to explore the nature of these relationships. She shows white women who voluntarily gave up their privileged status to cohabit with black men, and white communities that turned a blind eye toward such unions. It was not until after the Civil War--when freedom for blacks meant Southern whites needed new ways to enforce their putative superiority--that black men were routinely punished with violence for real, or imagined, relationships with white women.

From Library Journal
Hodes (history, New York Univ.) provides the first real scholarly exploration of this important topic. Relying primarily on legal documents and testimony generated by court cases, Hodes gives us several detailed case studies. She finds that before the Civil War, whites generally did not react violently to cases of interracial liaison but rather displayed a complex range of attitudes, from indifference to concern (especially if children resulted from the "connection"). In the postbellum period, however, whites often responded with extreme violence to any hint of miscegenation. Indeed, in an effort to diminish black political power, whites often invented incidents of interracial contact and reacted accordingly. A brilliant work, imaginatively researched and well written. Highly recommended.?Anthony O. Edmonds, Ball State Univ., Muncie, Ind.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (October 20, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300069707
• ISBN-13: 978-0300069709
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,435,727 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Scandalously Good Book, March 7, 2006

By	Herbert L Calhoun "paulocal" (Falls Church, VA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (Paperback)

This is a scandalously good and honest book; well researched and successful in pulling back the scab on one of the many important subterranean areas of southern America's lurid but very active cross-racial sexual life. Most of America's social history remains tucked away in various nooks and crannies of our collective repressed minds.

While the evidence is everywhere (the large numbers of American mulattoes and the fact that half of all American blacks and Native Americans have some white blood and rather incredibly about 30% of all whites have some black blood: How did it get that way? -- not through the White woman-Black man route, for sure.

There is a great deal to chew on here. Among others, it puts to rest the old myth of the wild black buck rapist. Many, if not most of the blacks lynched for rape were certifiably engaged in love affairs discovered and exposed too soon, with predictable consequences: The black man usually ended up paying the ultimate price to protect the reputation of his white female lover. But in many such instances the woman refused to take the "he raped me defense" and openly declared her love for her illicit black mate, and as a result, also suffered the inevitable consequences -effective expulsion from the white race.

When the other half of this sordid story comes to the fore - the "goings-on in the dark" between white men and black women -- only then can we truly say that America is coming of age. Five stars

1 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Read the exerpts on Amazon! Book is more complex, October 3, 2008

By	fre - See all my reviews

This review is from: White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (Paperback)

PLEASE READ THE EXCERPTS OF THIS BOOK ON AMAZON! This book does NOT say that MOST black man/white woman rape cases were about "lovers" being separated by racist white men! It does NOT suggest that black women were willingly "swinging" with white men while black men and white women were being separated!
This book TRIES to expose the many economic, racial,class, and gender issues that made southern black turn a blind eye to white female/black male sex BEFORE the Civil War, then start calling it rape AFTER!
This book clearly recognizes that systemic sexual exploitation of black women and girl by white men, but goes further to suggest that such abuse had few drawbacks for white men because- by law- all children of black slave mothers were slaves. While law said that any children born to a white mother- were free and had rights. This made black male/white female sex a potential source of non-white people who had full white status.
This book says much more than that. So, read the excerpts and then GET THE BOOK!

10 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Where is the companion volume?, April 26, 2004

By	Seth J. Frantzman (Jerusalem, Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (Paperback)

This is a wonderful book shedding light on something no one ever admits, namely the obsession of white women with black men. This does indeed expose the true taboo that no one ever mentions and that no one dares to speak of. But what the problem is here is that this book doesn't discuss the other side of this erotic coin. No where is it mentioned what all these white men were doing while their women were out with black men. The truth is that all these white men where cavorting with the young black women who frequently served as nannies and cooks in these households in the 19th century. In fact Strom Thurmonds own dalliance in the early 20th century with a teenage black women was simply the norm in those days. Yet no book dares to expose the other side of a coin that many know about, the illicit `jungle fever' of Caucasian men for African America women. So this book is a mixed bag, it examines one nature of inter-racial relations while ignoring another segment of 19th century society.

Seth J. Frantzman