History and biography intertwine in this detailed account of the
Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching and
its determined leader, Jessie Daniel Ames. A "failed" female
herself, unloved by father or husband and widowed at 31, Ames
rejected the model of frail southern ladyhood in favor of
independent, responsible citizenship. She made her name first as a
Texas suffragist (her town put up with it; she owned the phone
company), in the post-suffrage League of Women Voters, and then
(thanks to the horror of Klan violence) in the Atlanta-based
Commission on Interracial Cooperation, becoming its Director of
Woman's Work in 1929 and instituting the anti-lynching program.
Until she was forced to resign her work in 1944 by more liberal,
more sexist men, Ames headed the single-issue organization of
southern white "ladies" that exposed real lynch mob motives and
repudiated southern "chivalry." But Ames was no great radical; she
was paternalistic, insular, and intransigent, especially in
opposing federal anti-lynch laws. With careful detachment,
Professor Hall (History, Univ. of No. Carolina) weaves these varied
strands - feminism, anti-racism, ladylike elitism, womanly
independence - into the picture of a movement eclipsed by the
Sixties civil rights struggle and only now being understood as a
back burner of the women's movement. Ames herself, though well
documented in these pages (through previously unavailable family
papers and thorough research), never quite emerges from
professorial prose: "Although she could read the handwriting on the
wall, she refused to admit defeat." Still, Hall's account -
particularly her analysis of the interlocking social controls:
lynching and rape - is a useful contribution to the history of
women and civil rights. (Kirkus Reviews)
This newly updated edition connects the past with the present,
using the Clarence Thomas hearings -and their characterization by
Thomas as a "high-tech lynching"- to examine the links between
white supremacy and the sexual abuse of black women, and the
difficulty of forging an antiracist movement against sexual
violence.
"Revolt Against Chivalry" is the account of how Jesse Daniel
Ames and the antilynching campaign she led fused the causes of
social feminism and racial justice in the South during the 1920s
and 1930s.
The book traces Ames's political path from suffragism to
militant antiracism and provides a detailed description of the
Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, which
served through the 1930s as the chief expression of antilynching
sentiment in the white South.
"Revolt Against Chivalry" is also a biography of Ames herself:
it shows how Ames connected women's opposition to violence with
their search for influence and self-definition, thereby leading a
revolt against chivalry which was part of both sexual and racial
emancipation.
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