But She Can't Find Her [V.O.] Key

The white supremacy campaign itself put Black women and interracial sexuality at its center. In August, Black editor Alexander Manly printed an editorial on interracial liaisons in his newspaper. Manly argued that at least half the time white women lied about being raped. Then he pointed out that white men both raped and seduced Black women. And he dared to criticize white patriarchy on its own terms: "Poor white men are careless in the manner of protecting their women." Perhaps his worst offense in the eyes of whites was his comment that "the morals of the poor white people are on a par with their colored neighbors of like conditions." By bringing in white women's morals and the rape of Black women, Manly committed what the white press called "a dirty defamation," a "sweeping insult to all respectable white women who are poor," and "a great slur."(9) Three altercations serve as prototypes of the "parading" and "insulting" that made politics so personal on the streets of North Carolina. For example, in New Bern the daughter of a prominent white family set out on a leisurely stroll down Middle Street. Shortly, she met two Black girls, probably teenagers. According to the white press, they were "young and ignorant and therefore impudent [and] had heard of the `rights' of their race." As the white woman approached, the young girls locked arms and forced her to step off the high sidewalk and into the street as they passed. On another occasion an altercation became more "pointed." One sweltering afternoon, an example of "the loveliest of southern womanhood...dressed in white" walked out to get some air on a bridge. As she ambled across, she met a Black laundress who thrust "the point of her umbrella into her side." The white women kept walking, but as she turned to go back across the bridge, she saw the Black woman coming toward her again. This time, the laundress poked her harder with the umbrella and shouted, "Oh, you think you are fine!" Finally, an incident in Wilmington involved both sidewalks and umbrellas. When several white women encountered a Black woman deliberately standing in their way on the sidewalk, one of them "caught hold of the negress to shove her aside to prevent the intended collision, and the negress viciously attacked her with an umbrella." A Black male bystander shouted encouragement: "That's right; damn it, give it to her." The first is not peculiar to southern history; rather, it is common in history at large: the assumption that women