The Civil War Of The American South - 3167 Words

In the time after the Civil War the American South found itself in a sudden and un-prepared for state of great cultural flux, which came coupled with the destruction and rebuilding efforts of the physically ravaged post-war landscape; dubbing this new post-antebellum Southern era the time of Reconstruction. The beginning of this time saw the freeing of the slaves and the end of (legal) slave economics in the South, and therefore brought with it an initial sense of hope for the black Southern inhabitants. However, this hope was quickly diminished and replaced as the fear and powerful status-quo enforcing measures of the white upper class began to take hold throughout their society. Though a variety of efforts were used against black†¦show more content†¦There are a variety of reasons for the greater subjugation of black men over black women in Southern society which can be initially examined in order to understand the unique position which black women held. But one of the mos t evident and powerful, which lead to and was used in justifying a large majority of the efforts made against the advancement of black men, was that of a fear of miscegenation or racial mixing. An idea which had long since been held as one of the greatest fears of and threats to the status of the white race as superior. As a means to stopping this dire threat, the sexuality of the black male was conflated and propagandized far and wide to be an unstoppable force; and the black men embodying it to be so incoherently lustful and animalistic in their desire for white females that they would take any one at any time regardless of the situation. One particular example of the clear spreading of these type of ideas was discussed in Glenda Gilmore’s text â€Å"Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina, 1896-1920†. In which she discusses the almost conspiracy like efforts of three politically involved white men Furnifold Simmons, Josephus Daniels, and Charles Aycock; who spread their overly sexualized and intentionally frightening propaganda – of black males as lust filled beasts hunting the white women – so effectively that they influenced the infamous