| Dangerous
Liaisons
Sex and Love in the Segregated South
Charles
F. Robinson II
Why
was marriage against the law?
In
the tumultuous decades after the Civil War, as the southern
white elite reclaimed power, “racial mixing” was
the central concern of segregationists who strove to maintain
“racial purity.” Segregation—and race itself—was
based on the idea that interracial sex posed a biological
threat to the white race. In this groundbreaking study, Charles
Robinson examines how white southerners enforced anti-miscegenation
laws. His findings challenge conventional wisdom, documenting
a pattern of selective prosecution under which interracial
domestic relationships were punished even more harshly than
transient sexual encounters. Robinson shows that the real
crime was to suggest that black and white individuals might
be equals, a notion which undermined the legitimacy of the
economic, political, and social structure of white male supremacy.
Robinson
examines legal cases from across the South, considering both
criminal prosecutions brought by states and civil disputes
over marital and family assets. He also looks at U.S. Supreme
Court decisions, debates in state legislatures, comments in
the U.S. Congressional Record, and newspaper editorials. He
not only shows the hardening of racial categories but assesses
the attitudes of African Americans about anti-miscegenation
laws and intermarriage.
Dangerous
Liaisons vividly documents the regulation of intimacy
and its fundamental role in the construction of race.
“A
useful volume for those who want to know more about the variety
of antimiscegenation laws in the South or the gap between
statutory law and legal enforcement.”
—Journal
of American History
“Valuable
not only for its catalog of laws and cases but also for Robinson’s
unwavering attention to enforcement and defiance alike.”
—Journal
of Southern History
“The
most important book on the actual workings of anti-miscegenation
law ever written. . . . Robinson shows over and over again
that white authorities were less concerned about interracial
sex per se than they were with the possibility of white and
black people establishing bona fide romantic and domestic
relationships. This is an absolutely novel point.”
—James
T. Campbell, author of Songs of Zion: The African Methodist
Episcopal Church in the United States and South Africa (Yale,
1997)
“A
comprehensive account not just of the anti-miscegenation laws
on the books but also of the implementation of those laws.
Thorough, informative, valuable, intriguing. . . . Worthwhile
reading.”
—Rachel
Moran, author of Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of
Race and Romance
(Chicago, 2001)
Charles
F. Robinson II is an associate professor of
history and program director of the African American Studies
program at the University of Arkansas.
6"x9"
160 pages
August 2006
$19.95 (s) Paper
1-55728–833-X (978-1-55728-833-2)
2003
$39.95, cloth (s)
1-55728-755-4 (978-1-55728-755-7)
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