Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight Against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920
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UCLA UCLA Women's Law Journal Title The Application of Critical Race Feminism to the Anti-Lynching Movement: Black Women's Fight against Race and Gender Ideology, 1892-1920 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1kc308xf Journal UCLA Women's Law Journal, 3(0) Author Barnard, Amii Larkin Publication Date 1993 DOI 10.5070/L331017574 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California ARTICLE THE APPLICATION OF CRITICAL RACE FEMINISM TO THE ANTI-LYNCHING MOVEMENT: BLACK WOMEN'S FIGHT AGAINST RACE AND GENDER IDEOLOGY, 1892-1920 Amii Larkin Barnard* INTRODUCTION One muffled strain in the Silent South, a jarring chord and a vague and uncomprehended cadenza has been and still is the Ne- gro. And of that muffled chord, the one mute and voiceless note has been the sadly expectant Black Woman.... [Als our Cauca- sian barristersare not to blame if they cannot quite put themselves in the dark man's place, neither should the dark man be wholly expected fully and adequately to reproduce the exact Voice of the Black Woman. I At the turn of the twentieth century, two intersecting ideolo- gies controlled the consciousness of Americans: White Supremacy and True Womanhood. 2 These cultural beliefs prescribed roles for people according to their race and gender, establishing expectations for "proper" conduct. Together, these beliefs created a climate for * J.D. 1992 Georgetown University Law Center; B.A. 1989 Tufts University. The author is currently an associate at Bowles & Verna in Walnut Creek, California. The author would like to thank Professor Wendy Williams and Professor Anthony E. Cook of Georgetown University Law Center for their insightful guidance in the writing of this Article. 1. ANNA J. COOPER, A VOICE FROM THE SOUTH i, iii (Oxford Univ. Press 1988) (1892). 2. BEVERLY GUY-SHEFTALL, DAUGHTERS OF SORROW: ATTITUDES TOWARDS BLACK WOMEN, 1880-1920, at 12 (Darlene C. Hines et al. eds., 1990). UCLA WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 3:1 lynch ideology to flourish. White Supremacy legitimized the deval- uation of Black life, while True Womanhood provided the opportu- nity for the taking of Black life in the defense of a white woman's honor. Public acceptance of White Supremacy and True Woman- hood ideologies rationalized the mistreatment and continued subju- gation of Black people in general and Black women in particular. Race segregation was the de facto, if not de jure, law through- out the country, as race determined access to the fundamentals of living and limited social interaction. Whites, regardless of class, were given what W. E. B. Du Bois characterized as the "subtlest form of human flattery-social superiority over masses of other human beings."' 3 White Supremacy proclaimed the intellectual, physical and moral superiority of whites over Blacks. White Supremacy demanded the total deference of Blacks to whites in every aspect of daily life. A person's gender granted or denied basic freedoms, as women and men were viewed as having separate, defined spheres of influ- ence. True Womanhood defined women as by nature physically delicate, intellectually weak and spiritually pure, thus making them naturally designed for a sheltered life outside the public sphere. 4 The ideal of True Womanhood demanded purity, piety and defer- ence to men. In return, a woman who behaved "like a lady" was sheltered from the harshness of the public sphere. True Woman- hood commanded the protection of white ladies by white gentle- men. The cult of True Womanhood did not embrace Black women; simply put, Black women could not be ladies and, therefore, they did not deserve physical protection. Lynching enforced and encouraged compliance with the race and gender hierarchies established under White Supremacy and True Womanhood ideologies. The practice was cloaked in chival- rous notions: the common justification for a lynching was retribu- tion for the alleged rape of a white woman by a Black man. By incorporating common racial and gender stereotypes, this justifica- tion successfully masked the true identity of lynching as an instru- ment of Black subjugation wielded by whites. The public spectacle presented by lynchings brought this form of racial oppression under the world's critical examination. How- ever, lynching was only one of two violent devices used by whites to 3. Delores Janiewski, Sisters Under Their Skins: Southern Working Women, 1880-1950, in SEX, RACE AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN IN THE SOUTH 13, 26 (Joanne V. Hawks & Sheila L. Skemp eds., 1983). 4. GUY-SHEFTALL, supra note 2, at 12. 19931 ANTI-L YNCHING MOVEMENT oppress Black people during the first decades of Blacks' freedom in the United States. The gendered racism of lynch ideology cast Black women as immoral and unworthy of respect, which facili- tated their sexual exploitation by white men. Even contemporary civil rights leaders often overlooked the systematic rape of Black women by white men. Thus, White Supremacy and True Woman- hood ideologies interlocked to leave Black women, members of dis- advantaged gender and racial groups, at the bottom of the power hierarchy. Perhaps because of their weak political position and low social status, Black women recognized the oppressive nature of lynch ideology and its implications for their own continued sexual mistreatment and subjugation. Recognizing White Supremacy, True Womanhood, and the lynching mentality as tools of oppres- sion, Black women rejected the application of these beliefs as con- trary to reality and challenged their place in the minds of white and Black Americans. This deconstructive process is not unlike that which is going on today by Critical Race and feminist scholars. Critical Race Theory is a relatively new movement in the study of law.' Born out of the Critical Legal Studies tradition in 1987,6 Critical Race Theory em- braces a loosely organized group of scholars whose works analyze the ways in which the law perpetuates the subordination of people of color on cultural, institutional and individual levels. In this Arti- cle, I attempt to analyze the Black women's anti-lynching move- ment of 1892-1920 from Critical Race Theory and feminist perspectives. This Article examines the Anti-Lynching Movement, explor- ing the ways Black women fought the race and gender oppression that controlled their lives. Part I discusses the ideological justifica- tion for lynching. Part II recounts the achievements of Ida B. Wells, the first person to expose lynching as a complex conspiracy designed by whites to keep Blacks in a subordinate status. Part III 5. Seminal works include the following: Jose A. Bracamonte, Minority Critiquesof the CriticalLegal Studies Movement, 22 HARV. C.R.-C.L. L. REV. 297 (1987); Anthony E. Cook, Beyond Critical Legal Studies: The Reconstructive Theology of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 103 HARV. L. REV. 985 (1990); Kimberl W. Crenshaw, Race, Re- form, and Retrenchment: Transformation and Legitimation in Antidiscrimination Law, 101 HARV. L. REV. 1331 (1988). 6. Derrick Bell's work is credited with inspiring the Critical Race Theory move- ment. See, e.g., DERRICK A. BELL, JR., AND WE ARE NOT SAVED (1987); Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Racial Remediation:An Historical Perspective on Current Conditions, 52 NO- TRE DAME L. REV. 5 (1976); Derrick A. Bell, Jr., Waiting on the Promise of Brown, 39 LAW & CONTEMP. PROBS., Spring 1975, at 341; Derrick A. Bell, Jr., The Real Cost of Racial Equality, Civ. LIBERTIES REV., Summer 1974, at 79. UCLA WOMEN'S LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 3:1 reviews the Black women's club movement and its attack on lynch- ing through its organization of reform efforts to defend the charac- ter of Black women. Part IV explores Black women's involvement in later years and the founding of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Part V explores the attitudes about lynching held by three of the most prominent Black male figures of the time. Part VI analyzes how these anti-lynching efforts succeeded and failed in addressing the various facets of race and gender that were part and parcel of White Supremacist and True Womanhood ideologies. The Article concludes that Black women's experience with white sexual violence gave them a unique perspective which allowed them to see through, or deconstruct, the "protection of white wo- manhood" justification for lynching. 7 Black women-who received no benefit from a system that based preferences on "whiteness" and "maleness"-recognized the connection between lynching and rape as interdependent links in the system of white power. Subject to gendered racism, Black women perceived these abuses more clearly than white women or Black men. This perception enabled Black women to experientially and theoretically deconstruct the founda- tions of White Supremacy and bring about transformative social struggle through the Anti-Lynching Movement. At the same time, Black women's acceptance of prevailing standards and beliefs led them to defend their own sexuality and morality in terms of the oppressive behavioral code demanded of white "ladies." I. THE FORMATION OF AN IDEOLOGICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR LYNCHING The late 1800s were a hopeful time for most Black Americans. The abolition of slavery released many Black Americans from their status as mere chattel. Furthermore, the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment in 1870 and the Civil Rights Act of 1875 promised to guarantee the new Freemen and Freewomen citizenship rights equal to those enjoyed by their former masters. However, African-Amer- icans' hopes of attaining equal citizenship rights turned out to be false hopes indeed. The Southern states, humiliated by their defeat in the Civil War, had no intention of guaranteeing African-Ameri- cans the rights imposed by the Reconstruction Congress. Over 7. Although the ideal of True Womanhood oppressed white women, they did not recognize the pedestal as a "gilded cage" until the 1930s.