Gail Bederman > Quotes

“After 1889, however, excited by rumors of “black beast rapists,” Southern whites began to lynch African American men in record numbers. In 1892, the violence reached its apogee, with 161 African Americans murdered by white mobs. Ten years before, in 1882, only forty-nine black men had been lynched.8 As lynchings grew in frequency, they also grew in brutality, commonly including burnings alive, castrations, dismemberments, and other deliberate and odious tortures.”
― Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917

“The white man” represented “civilization” as a single human being defined equally by his whiteness and by his maleness.”
― Gail Bederman, Manliness & Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917