The historian author of Before Jim Crow presents a major history of the fight for racial equality in America that argues that fear of Black sexuality has played a major factor in the endurance of white supremacy. 20,000 first printing. - (Baker & Taylor)
"In White Fright, acclaimed historian Jane Dailey offers a radical reinterpretation of the fight for African American rights, showing how that fight has been closely bound, both in terms of law and in the white imagination, to the question of interracialsex and marriage. White fear of black sexuality not only fueled the systems of exclusion and oppression under Jim Crow, she contends it was also a central factor driving white resistance to the civil rights movement. Sex, love, and marriage were in fact the lynchpin of white supremacist fear and ideology. In the course of this gripping and urgent investigation, Dailey examines how white fears played out in the battles over lynching, in criticisms of black troops' behavior overseas in France and England during WWII, in the violent reactions of whites following the Brown v. Board decision, and in the aftermath of the eventual Loving v. Virginia ruling, which finally declared marriage a "fundamental freedom." Placing sex at the center of civil rights history, White Fright offers a bold and insightful new take on one of the darkest threads running through American history"-- - (Baker & Taylor)
<div><b>A major new history of the fight for racial equality in America, arguing that fear of black sexuality has undergirded white supremacy from the start.</b></div><div><br></div>In <i>White Fright</i>, historian Jane Dailey brilliantly reframes our understanding of the long struggle for African American rights. Those fighting against equality were not motivated only by a sense of innate superiority, as is often supposed, but also by an intense fear of black sexuality.<br><br>In this urgent investigation, Dailey examines how white anxiety about interracial sex and marriage found expression in some of the most contentious episodes of American history since Reconstruction: in battles over lynching, in the policing of black troops' behavior overseas during World War II, in the violent outbursts following the Supreme Court's decision in <i>Brown v. Board of Education</i>, and in the tragic story of Emmett Till. The question was finally settled -- as a legal matter -- with the Court's definitive 1967 decision in <i>Loving v. Virginia</i>, which declared interracial marriage a "fundamental freedom." Placing sex at the center of our civil rights history, <i>White Fright </i>offers a bold new take on one of the most confounding threads running through American history.<br> - (Grand Central Pub)