“It Will Be Done to Maintain White Supremacy”
“It Will Be Done to Maintain White Supremacy”
The Decline of Intervention in the South
Politicians soon used misdemeanor assault and battery against a spouse as a “color-blind” method to disenfranchise African-American men. Conviction of “wife beating,” then, barred many southern men from voting. Courts in turn reflected this change. By the 1890s, the number of court cases for intimate partner violence declined, and newspaper articles started more frequently applying negative racial descriptors when talking about black abusers. The trend was evident throughout the South and not just in New Orleans. As society focused on the issue of race, white women and black women lost rights too. Courts stopped recognizing women’s personhood and denied women the right to testify against their husbands. Without much legal recourse, women could not challenge the male privilege of chastisement.
Keywords: Assault and battery, Disenfranchise, Wife beating, Personhood, White supremacy
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