TH4 Body and Protecting Womanhood


The readings for today continue to bring up the idea of the desire to control of the body, as stated in Coates' Between The World and Me. As the course has progressed, we have seen a pattern with white women lying to police about black men raping them, to save themselves from public outcry in what would be deemed an 'inappropriate situation' for the time. After reading other students blog posts, I noticed a trend in asking why the Southerners stood by and allowed this to continuously happen, as most were aware that this was not a fair trial at hand. Gilmore provides a great point when she describing the distribution of the papers that discussed the racial discourse of the era: "Southerners were too scared to subscribe to the Southern Worker, and organizers were too scared to distribute it."(Gilmore 119). If they were too afraid to even read a paper and be recognized for doing so, I doubt that they would feel comfortable speaking out against these racist acts.

The idea of protecting the fragile white womanhood, a topic discussed earlier in the semester with the pieces from Amy Woods on the lynching trials brings along the idea of painting black men as the problems. In the case of the 'rape' of Myrtle Vance, Mrs. Locklear, and many more of this era in the South, the white women's words were powerful enough to have these men convicted before a trial began, if they were lucky enough to survive the mobs for that long. Gilmore touches on this several times, noting  "A white woman's reputation might stand up to hoboing, crossdressing, and one to two wild times with white men. It could never survive traveling in the same railroad car with black men."(Gilmore 120). For me, the interesting part of the statement is upholding the white woman's reputation by bringing someone else, black men, down in a domino act. When Gilmore discusses Bates recanting her confession in 1932, the public response is astounding. Gilmore comments on the turn of events, but admits "most white Southerners no longer believed Ruby Bates and thought that the Communists had corrupted her. When she was a white sexually active hobo draped in the gauze of white southern womanhood, she could not tell a lie. When she was a sexually active hobo involved with the Communist Party, they thought the truth was not in her. "(Gilmore 122).  The unspeakable horror occur when you place a woman with a certain identity in a particular social scene. If this had been a white man accused, what would the outcome be after she went back on her original confession? Would a group of white men suffer innocently in prison for years like the Scottsboro Boys if the races had been reversed?

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