White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South [Paperback]

Martha Hodes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 11, 1999

This book is the first to explore the history of a powerful category of illicit sex in America's past: liaisons between Southern white women and black men. Martha Hodes tells a series of stories about such liaisons in the years before the Civil War, explores the complex ways in which white Southerners tolerated them in the slave South, and shows how and why these responses changed with emancipation.

Hodes provides details of the wedding of a white servant-woman and a slave man in 1681, an antebellum rape accusation that uncovered a relationship between an unmarried white woman and a slave, and a divorce plea from a white farmer based on an adulterous affair between his wife and a neighborhood slave. Drawing on sources that include courtroom testimony, legislative petitions, pardon pleas, and congressional testimony, she presents the voices of the authorities, eyewitnesses, and the transgressors themselves -- and these voices seem to say that in the slave South, whites were not overwhelmingly concerned about such liaisons, beyond the racial and legal status of the children that were produced. Only with the advent of black freedom did the issue move beyond neighborhood dramas and into the arena of politics, becoming a much more serious taboo than it had ever been before. Hodes gives vivid examples of the violence that followed the upheaval of war, when black men and white women were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan and unprecedented white rage and terrorism against such liaisons began to erupt. An era of terror and lynchings was inaugurated, and the legacy of these sexual politics lingered well into the twentieth century.

"A fascinating and important book, a persuasive and insightfulexploration of a volatile topic". -- Edward L. Ayers, University of Virginia

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press (January 11, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300077505
• ISBN-13: 978-0300077506
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #89,456 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 15 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
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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 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Any Lament Regarding the 'Old Days' Must Be Reconsidered..., June 26, 2010

By 

John R. Spencer (Manheim, Pennsylvania United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South (Paperback)

The book does absolutely make one think (or better--realize) that the 'Old Days' were not necessarily the 'Best Days.'
As I was reading the book, I could not help but think of color as being 'everything.'
Considering that the 'white' skin was an item of power for the woman, it is indeed fascinating as to what would motivate the white women described in the book to love a 'negro' man. Especially, if that 'negro' man was a slave. I would like to believe the white 'ladies' (yes, I use that word) knew what the 'position' the man held in society. And I would like to believe the ladies knew what 'position' she would now hold in society. Thus, some of the tragic events described in the book.

I did like the chronological flow of the book and the reference back to earlier times as was warranted when coming to the end of the nineteenth century (nearly modern times).

Of course, a subject like this would have to be absolutely rigorously researched. And, it does appear that Ms. Hodes really did her job in that respect.

I will admit to being surprised that it was not until the immediate run-up and after the Civil War that 'automatic' murder/lynching of black men occrred with impunity. I had thought that there was 'automatic' lynching of any black man that 'knew' a white woman.

It is too bad that we do not have a fuller record of the 'voiceless' men.

As I was reading the book and referring to the notes, I could not help but think just kind of courage it took to cross color 'lines.'
No matter what, it does seem that sex, lust, and love (the order is deliberate) is just something that cannot be legislated, beat, or murdered away.

Reading the book certainly had me thinking about what 'freedom' means. Depictions of idyllic times in the 'Old Days' certainly needs at the very least more consideration. We all would do well to take a 'hard' look at the 'Old Days' -- no matter who.

The book is certainly more than a worthy excursion into subject matter that is fraught with 'landmines' (political, moral, etc).

3 of 8 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!