Book Reviewed: Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History by Martha Hodes

Interracial Intimacies in colonial and post-colonial America This book edited by NYU historian Martha Hodes illustrates interracial intimacies, which existed in colonial and postcolonial days, was motivated by sex, economic circumstances, love, and lust. This may intimidate common beliefs and prejudices, but this book illustrates the existence of such unions even in conservative states. There is a record of violent encounters, devoted relationships, legal battles, political struggle, commercial exchanges, class antipathy, radical & conservative activism. Many chapters in this volume focus on specific relationships that illustrates coercion, persecution, affection, and ambivalence. Based on diaries, letters, and contemporary legal and historical documents, oral history, and memories of descendants, the essays from 1690s to the 1970s resonate with various contemporary dilemma. One chapter discusses force and consent in the lives of black and white female laborers in the early republic. There is a story of a slaveholding free man of color in antebellum Virginia: Ro Wright, married and divorced one white woman, then formed a partnership with another. Both unions were accepted by neighboring white slaveholders. After Wright's death, family members of African descent asserted their property rights, and won their court cases. This shows that in some cases, racial identity in the slave South could be mediated in unusual ways by class status than the race. In another chapter the story of the daughter of a slave and slave-owner, Amanda America Dickson grew up in her white father's household in Georgia's Black Belt, inherited his estate, married white man, and died wealthy. The life of Rachel Knight, a slave of mixed ancestry participated in anti-confederate uprising of white deserters in Mississippi. In South Carolina, an elusive gay encounter between two black men and one white man in early twentieth century shows how a false accusation of sexual assault would find the black men guilty. One chapter examines an unusual alliance between Garveyite black nationalists and white supremacists in their campaigns of supporting a Virginia law intended to prohibit racial mixing Several chapters suggests that the property rights and inheritance were main stumbling blocks in accepting an interracial relationship. Conservatives feared that the economy may be dominated by the biracial children. One chapter focus on consensual sex between blacks and whites in New York City when black and white abolitionists worked together in the city. The conservatives argued that such relationship is an "amalgamation" process. Following the violence of 1834 such relationships were discouraged. However, the economy of the city demanded performers where many jazz clubs, bars and performing theaters needed black performers. In addition, the Irish immigrants who were migrating to United States found an economic partnership with black community of the city. With the advent of black freedom after the Civil War sex between white women and black men provoke extreme white alarm. Following the upheaval of war and emancipation, transgressors were targeted by the Ku Klux Klan in a pattern of violence that culminated in unprecedented white terrorism by the end of the century. Since 1750s, Quakers engaged in abolition were actively involved in the economic, educational, and political well-being of the former slaves. Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College and the Quaker Collection at Haverford College, both located Pennsylvania are jointly the custodians of Quaker meeting records. They have records of the life stories of many slaves and their stories. These readings are energizing narratives of the African slaves. Professor Hodes is a well-known historian who researched and published several books about the relationships and intimacies existed between white women and black men during the days of slavery.