
White Fright
The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America's Racist History
Jane Dailey(Author)
Basic Books (Publisher)
Published on 17. November 2020
Book
Hardback
368 pages
978-1-5416-4655-1 (ISBN)
Description
"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 interracial sex 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"--
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 160 mm
Thickness: 38 mm
Weight
544 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5416-4655-1 (9781541646551)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
11/2020
Basic Books
€13.99
Available for download
Person
Jane Dailey is an associate professor of history at the University of Chicago. A recipient of fellowships from the American Academy in Berlin and the Guggenheim Foundation, she is also the author and coauthor of several previous books, including Before Jim Crow and Building the American Republic. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.