“Sneaking Curs” and “Negro Brutes”:
Official Transcripts of Racial Otherness in Tampa, Florida, 1890-1912
Dennis P. Halpin and Jared G. Toney
University of South Florida
On 4 July, 1899, the Tampa Morning Tribune reported a “sensation of no small magnitude.” Reverend S.S. Patterson, pastor of the Allen Temple Methodist Church, local merchant, and “negro of exemplary character,” had been arrested on charges of arson. The article announced to its overwhelmingly white readership that the case against him looked “unmistakably strong and ugly.” According to the Tribune story, a small blaze inside a store at the corner of Central and Constant Streets caught the attention of a passerby who immediately gave alarm. Having “just finished a rousing sermon at his church,” Reverend Patterson, the store’s owner, arrived on the scene armed with a 38-caliber revolver and was immediately taken into police custody. The Tribune anticipated Patterson’s guilt by revealing the details of a $500 insurance policy on the business, implying a willful attempt at fraud and arson. The column speculated that Patterson’s “past good record” in the community would “help him [overcome] his present troubles.”[1]
While Reverend Patterson’s life has largely escaped scrutiny in the local historical record, the circumstances surrounding his alleged crime provide valuable insights into the experiences of African Americans in Tampa in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Our intent is not to challenge the validity of such reports; rather, our primary concern is in analyzing what they reveal about the communities for and about whom they spoke. It is our contention that stories found in local Anglo newspapers such as the Tampa Morning Tribune and the Tampa Daily Times betray the limits of white perceptions and understandings of the city’s black community, racial identity, and subaltern resistance. In turn, these stories expose highly racialized conveyances of Anglo power over African Americans and other “non-whites” in Tampa.[2]
Not surprisingly, the principal newspapers of the day (that provide the most abundant source of extant material) privileged white voices and perspectives above all others, employing a highly racialized discourse that functioned, consciously or not, to discredit opposition and undermine claims of alterity. White newspapers like the Tampa Morning Tribune and the Tampa Daily Times communicated, in the words of political scientist James C. Scott, a “public transcript” of domination, “designed to be impressive, to affirm and naturalize the power of dominant elites, and to conceal or euphemize the dirty linen of their rule.”[3]
In an age prior to the advent of radio and television, such newspapers held tremendous power in shaping the perceptions and expectations of its readership. For Anglos who did not interact with African Americans on a daily basis (or did so exclusively on their terms), frequent portrayals of racial otherness, lawlessness, immorality, and violence became a primary basis for understanding and interpreting black identity and behavior.[4] More importantly, Anglo domination and power was contingent upon the construction of a knowledge system that “proved” white supremacy and therefore “naturalized” the stratification of the races. Local newspapers became instrumental in this process. As historian Gail Bederman notes, “Ideas widely accepted as true determine what sorts of power relations people believe are desirable, as well as what sorts of political aims and strategies they can imagine.”[5] For the Anglo residents of Tampa, such newspapers served as primary conduits of information, reinforcing segregation by exacerbating racial tensions and restricting the parameters of popular discourse.
Without evidence to the contrary, the stories in the pages of mainstream Tampa newspapers confirmed both white contentions of superiority and corresponding constructions of black inferiority. Local elites utilized newspaper stories, like the one concerning Patterson, to justify ongoing assertions of race-based domination.[6] Beginning in the 1890s, members of white middle-class society fashioned and advanced a hegemonic discourse that conveniently positioned them at civilization’s apex.[7] Although discourses of “civilization” in the US surfaced much earlier than the 1890s, Victorian society increasingly relied upon a racialized and gender-specific comprehension supported by Social Darwinist theories of evolution and millennialism. Within this formulation, virtue, nobility, and braveness marked a man’s principled character; while idealized femininity denoted purity and chastity, as well as an innocence and vulnerability that required zealous protection by “manly” white men. Members of white, middle class society celebrated sexual difference as evidence of such progress and refinement, whereby “one could identify advanced civilizations by the degree of their sexual differentiation.” As constructed by white Victorian men and women, however, such definitions were exclusive to race and class. Accounts of African-Americans’ criminality, lasciviousness, and hypersexuality found in Tampa’s newspapers thus created and reproduced a racialized discourse that effectively reinforced segregation and racially exclusive conceptions of “civilization.”[8]
The period between 1890 and 1912 proved a crucial time in Tampa’s history. As a relatively new urban center, the city was still negotiating fluid physical and ideological boundaries of race that were subject to contestation. With growing African-American and Latin populations, entrenched Anglo interests employed myriad methods to contain and disarm the perceived threat posed by ethnic and racial minorities. By the turn of the century, Jim Crow segregation relegated the majority of Tampa’s black population to a handful of racially delineated neighborhoods including “the Scrub” (in Tampa’s Central Avenue district), West Tampa, Ybor City, Dobyville, and College Hill.[9] In 1900, over 4,000 African Americans called Tampa home, accounting for nearly twenty-eight percent of the overall population. By 1910, the black population had almost doubled, although the percentage of blacks had declined slightly due to the rapid influx of new white residents.[10] Though the Scrub contained “by far the largest number [of blacks] in any one area in the city,” Ybor City served as the “center of the foreign-born Negro population,” while College Hill and West Tampa attracted the “overflow” residents, among them the newcomers and the “generally poorly paid” of Tampa’s black population.[11]As the numbers of blacks increased, “So did white anxiety and fear, resulting in increasing racial restrictions in the Jim Crow racial caste system.”[12] Tampa’s Anglo population enforced Jim Crow segregation in public and private spaces in order to limit interracial interactions.
Many stories in the newspapers stigmatized black neighborhoods and relegated minority interests and concerns to the periphery. Few of the homes in Tampa’s growing African-American neighborhoods had access to running water, sewer connections, bathing facilities, or regular sanitation service. “The rent quarters are small and close together,” wrote Walter T. and Virginia M. Howard, two historians who have documented black living conditions in the city. “They are situated on unpaved streets and narrow alleys. Bathing facilities are scarce: garbage is often uncollected.”[13] The local newspapers effectively captured the urgency with which whites regarded the encroachment of blacks and the potential transgression of segregated spaces. Through the continuous barrage of racially-tinged rhetoric, black spaces emerged in the popular press as mystified burrows of sin and wickedness where passions were indulged and the depravities of “hobgobblins” and “spooks” abounded.[14] In stories like those concerning the Reverend Patterson, the Scrub also became the location where the allure of lascivious behavior (in the form of sexual promiscuity and alcohol consumption) became irresistible even to a “negro of exemplary character.”[15]
Throughout the pages of local newspapers, white journalists often portrayed African Americans collectively as a prurient race of criminals. Despite Reverend Patterson’s “past good record” and standing in the community (as pastor of a local church), both the Anglo press and local law enforcement officials presumed his guilt out of hand.[16] Indeed, to reinforce such sentiments the papers regularly published sensationalized accounts of police forays into the Scrub. In 1896, for instance, the Tampa Morning Tribune reported a missing infant thought to be “buried in a back yard.” When an investigating officer interviewed the midwife and residents of the house where the baby was allegedly born, he discovered a freshly buried box in the backyard with the child’s body inside. The Tribune reported that the infant’s mother was married to a man that was not the baby’s father. Details of these events, the paper remarked, stirred the “people in Scrubdom.”[17]
Newspapers also frequently reported on homicides committed in predominantly black neighborhoods. A sampling of such stories reveals a number of consistent themes. For instance, a 1912 headline in the Tampa Daily Times warned readers of “another negro shooting in Ybor City,” by an assailant the paper dubbed “Assassination Sam,” a man apparently connected with a number of murders in Ybor City.[18] According to another story published in the 1890s, “The scrub has been the scene of another scandal, and as a consequence three negroes are considerably less joyful than they were.” The paper explained that Robert Meachem, an out-of-town preacher and prominent African-American politician, became “acquainted with one Georgia McGraw,” a local resident. While patrolling the Scrub, a black police officer by the name of Milton “discovered” the couple in “her maiden bower.” Upon his discovery, Milton, an alleged former romantic acquaintance of McGraw, shot the couple multiple times, severely wounding them both.[19]
The next day the Tribune followed up the story with further details. Officer Milton claimed that Meachem had pulled a gun on him, although none was recovered at the scene. However, the paper reported that this “by no means is conclusive evidence of the falsity of Milton’s story” because a number of “good Samaritans of the scrub” had stolen the preacher’s watch.[20] In 1901, the Tribune also announced that two young white men “got into bad and fatal company” at a late-night gathering of African-American youths, where a “dusky desperado used them as targets for his revolver.” The lesson of the tragedy, the newspaper informed its readers, served as “a warning to the white boys not to attend negro dances.”[21]
In highlighting such “crimes,” the reports portrayed African Americans as inherently inferior, thereby legitimizing Anglo claims of domination and paternalism while providing a launching point for wide-reaching critiques of the entire African-American race. For instance, in reporting the story of the missing newborn, one journalist declared, “The negro race is nothing if not emotional, and are as equally superstitious. Anything that savors of death and hobgobblins, or spooks, runs them half crazy as a rule.”[22] A similar example is found in the story of Robert Meachem’s shooting. In this case, the Tribune reinforced depictions of blacks as an iniquitous and lawless race by cynically mentioning the thievery of the “good Samaritans of the Scrub.”[23] The Daily Times also contained frequent calls to vigilance, announcing, for example, a “Negro fiend captured by police officers only to escape with handcuffs on.”[24] Furthermore, the paper’s descriptions of “black criminality” extended across class lines, advancing the notion that African Americans, regardless of their economic success or social status, were ultimately limited by the color of their skin. While two of the aforementioned accounts concerned church officials, another also depicted the nefarious conduct of a black police officer. These men, presumably members of the black middle class, were also likely to have been prominent voices within the community. In each of the reports, the newspapers depicted the antagonists as either dishonest in the case of Patterson, prone to act hastily on emotion in the case of Officer Milton, or promiscuous in the case of all three men.
Stories in daily newspapers also transmitted exaggerated and degrading attributes onto black bodies. Regular readers faced a continuous rhetorical barrage that served to effectively dehumanize African Americans and further exacerbate racial stereotypes and violent hostilities. Throughout local newspapers, writers infused black bodies with animal-like characteristics, describing African Americans as, for example, running like “scared deer” or possessing the “agility of a cat.”[25] Other times newspaper stories made this connection less explicitly through descriptions of African Americans as the targets of hunting and sport by law enforcement officials and vigilantes. For example, when a black man being held for murder escaped police custody in October, 1912, the Tampa Daily Times celebrated the hunt, announcing that, “The Killer” was “hemmed in a swamp near six-mile creek by officers,” and would soon be discovered.[26] Another illustrative example occurred in January, 1905 when police arrested W.P. Richardson, “a very muscular negro brute,” for allegedly threatening bystanders with a knife. For days afterwards Richardson evaded policemen and “ran amuck” in the Scrub. Commenting on the story, the Tampa Morning Tribune editorialized that Richardson “barely escaped a death that is too good for human animals of such low bestial instincts.”[27]
The stories of “exciting manhunt[s],” and posses out in search of “villains” and “assault fiend[s]” conveyed racial constructions that in many cases informed Anglo perceptions and framed the parameters of public knowledge.[28] By ascribing animalistic qualities to African-American males, Tampa newspapers indicted the entire black race and implied their inferior evolutionary development. Moreover, such depictions denied blacks their humanity, making it easier for whites to justify the subordination, segregation, and oppression of African Americans. As one story in the Tampa Morning Tribune stated when describing the search for an “infamous negro,” “People would feel no more compunction of conscience in shooting him down than they would in killing a mad-dog or a rattlesnake.”[29] Anglos utilized reports, like one involving W. Stevenson, “The Bully of the Scrub,” to support and advance these contentions. In December, 1900, an altercation began when Stevenson’s girlfriend, “one of the most notorious women in the Scrub,” approached Policeman Crumpton to complain that Stevenson “had been treating her brutally.” When the officer tried to apprehend Stevenson, the fugitive uttered “an oath and taking hurried aim, fired,” narrowly missing Crumpton. The officer immediately returned fire, killing Stevenson. Stevenson, the report implied, met an inglorious demise in “the alley back of Salter’s barroom,” affording him little more recognition in death than was given him in life.[30]
Perceptions of African-American sexuality and licentiousness often elicited anxiety and trepidation among white Tampans through frequent portrayals of black immorality and rampant promiscuity. In the respective stories recounting the shooting of W. Stevenson, the “Bully of the Scrub,” and Reverend Meachem, newspapers implied that both black antagonists were involved in promiscuous sexual affairs. In addition, both Stevenson and Policeman Milton (who shot Meachem) were depicted as unstable and prone to act on emotion.[31] Another Tribune story, entitled “His Good Angel,” recounted the tale of Andrew Williams, a black man arrested for public drunkenness with a five-dollar fine levied against him. When it became known that Williams had only two dollars on him at the time of his arrest, “a negress” named May Virgin offered to help him out of his bind. Virgin convinced Williams to give her his two dollars with the promise that she would return with five dollars to pay his fine. Time passed and Virgin did not return, but later that day the police arrested Virgin for public drunkenness. The Tribune snidely commented that “she had spent Williams $2 to purchase liquor.”[32] The story of Williams and Virgin revealed a few of the many common depictions of African-American men and women. In the report Williams is portrayed as foolish, or at the least naïve; while May Virgin is shown to be cunning and deceitful, both common characteristics ascribed to black women.
Like May Virgin, other African-American women appear in the pages of the Tampa Morning Tribune not only as predatory and deceitful, but also as hypersexualized. Not surprisingly, the Anglo press treated black women as foils for the trope of the “virtuous white female.” The papers are replete with stories of dissolute and allegedly promiscuous black women working in bordellos or as prostitutes.[33] In 1912, two white men ventured into the “Tenderloin,” a local gathering place where “maidens of dusky hue are to be found.” The Tribune reported that the two white men, Charles Thompson and E. H. Dugold, “imbibed considerably” in the pleasures to be found in the Tenderloin. While there, Janie Sargent, identified only as a “negro” woman (although it is not clear if she herself was a “maiden”), robbed the two men. On another occasion, the Tampa Daily Times announced, “Darktown Belles Got the Worst of It,” describing “two cases in which” African-American women “drew knives with which to convince their dusky beaus of the superiority of the charms of the belles.” The Times interpreted such evidence as “proof that the [black] female is more deadly than the male,” and therefore worthy of suspicion and admonishment.[34] In similar stories, newspapers used these events to impart lessons about the cunningness of black women who were not reticent about using their sexuality to their advantage. Moreover, many of the traits (their alleged cunningness, predatory and treacherous nature, and hypersexuality) attributed to black women bore a striking resemblance to common constructions of black males. Anglos perceived a pronounced differentiation of gender roles as one of the hallmarks of their own advanced race, constituted, in the words of Joan Scott, “by hierarchical social structures.”[35] Detecting few gender distinctions between African Americans, conservative white interests positioned black males and females alike (along with other racial and ethnic “others”) at the nadir of ideas about culture, refinement, and progress.
Assaults on women received particular attention in the daily press. Tales of sexual assault enabled white reporters to deploy one of their most oft-used racial tropes: describing black men as savage “brutes.” In stories like “An Atrocious Assault” and “Black Brute Seeks Noose,” African-American males were portrayed as being at the mercy of their uncontrollable instincts and animalistic sexual proclivities.[36] For example, on a balmy August night in 1899, a “desperate attempt was made by a negro to assault a Cuban woman” living in Ybor City, Tampa’s nearby immigrant enclave. Though the assailant escaped capture, a “large crowd” had soon “gathered in the vicinity,” expressing “much indignation” over the alleged crime. [37] Although, as this story makes apparent, women of all shades were vulnerable to the prurient black male trope, the exaggerated virtue of white womanhood made alleged assaults on them particularly devastating and retribution especially sadistic for the accused. The perceived crimes were not limited to individual bodies, but instead impugned the entire African-American male population. These stories perpetuated an imagery of black violence and immorality while encouraging Anglo vigilance and fueling the fires of Jim Crow justice. They produced, in the words of Michel Foucault, an “economy of power,” wherein “the effects of power” were circulated in a manner “adapted and individualized throughout the entire social body.”[38]
Although on the surface the above stories appear as common, yet unremarkable, by-products of the racism that permeated turn-of-the-century US society, when situated within the context of the discourse of “civilization” they became more meaningful. Anglo readers in Tampa would have known that each of these archetypical characters, represented by Stevenson, Meachem, Virgin, Williams, and others were being implicitly compared to idyllic notions of white men and woman. Descriptions of African Americans as foolish, naïve, cunning, promiscuous, and deceitful stood in stark contrast to white, middle-class Victorian ideologies of gender.[39] In many of these stories, African-American men exhibited a marked lack of sexual control, one of the defining characteristics of “civilized manliness” in the late 1890s. Perceptions of black women’s sexuality also effectively reinforced the sanctity of white womanhood. In the case of Andrew Williams and May Virgin, the Tribune’s white readership would also have recognized that Virgin’s cunningness effectively emasculated Williams, something not permitted within Victorian constructions of true manhood. Anglos relied upon a myriad of racial tropes and Social Darwinist theories of evolution to argue that African Americans were innately inferior, “as the antithesis of both the white man and civilization.” Though the myriad examples are too many to recount here, local headlines regularly confirmed white suspicions about African-American sexuality, while reinforcing notions of white innocence and male superiority through recurrent depictions of black immorality and licentiousness.[40]
Future research will attempt to situate the voices of the black community within this larger discourse of race and sexuality, acknowledging the ways in which African Americans resisted and undermined racial discrimination in Tampa.
This article began as two graduate papers written in Spring, 2004 for a seminar at the University of South Florida. We wish foremost to thank Barbara Berglund, who, through her own rigorous scholarship, sympathetic ear, and critical pen, has provided us the theoretical and methodological tools to think and write creatively and effectively as historians. While the weaknesses of the paper are entirely our own, the strengths are a direct result of her guidance both in and outside the classroom. We are also indebted to Robert Ingalls and Nancy Hewitt, both of whom generously read drafts and provided insightful critiques of and suggestions for the paper. Finally, we wish to express our appreciation to the anonymous readers whose comments strengthened the clarity of our argument, and the Florida Conference of Historians who provided a forum for us to share this story.
[1]Tampa Morning Tribune, 4 July, 1899.
[2]Most simply, the ‘Anglo’ population of Tampa can be defined as whites of non-Latin descent whose native language was English. However, it can be more effectively understood as a reference to a national majority who maintained political and social power over ethnic and racial minorities. Because race is a social construction legitimized within a particular discourse of power, the category could be─and was ─transgressed by elite members of the Latin and, arguably, African-American, communities with access to local politicians and business leaders. Race, as historians have since recognized, was (and continues to be) very much a language of power.
[3]James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990) 18; Robin D.G. Kelley utilizes Scott’s theories of public and hidden transcripts to uncover resistance in black communities in the Jim Crow-era US. See Robin D.G. Kelley, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (NY: Free Press, 1996), particularly chapters 1-4; Also see Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990).
[4]In 1927 one chronicler of black life in Tampa observed that, “Interracial contacts between the white and colored elements in Tampa, as elsewhere in the South, are for the most part limited to those of a business nature.” While one can be sure that surreptitious encounters did in fact occur, this at least was the official statement regarding race relations. See Arthur Raper, et al., “A Study of Negro Life in Tampa,” 1927, Courtesy of USF Special Collections.
[5]Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 24.
[6]See Michel Foucault, “Truth and Power,” in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977, Colin Gordon, ed., (NY: Pantheon Books, 1972), 109-133. Here, 113: The production of such a “discursive regime,” according to Foucault, situates the “effects of power” within a specific and particular “play of statements.”
[7]When speaking of “hegemony,” we mean that the discourse of domination constructed and advanced by entrenched Anglo interests permeated southern white culture and perceptions in myriad ways, informing social relations and reinforcing the segregation and stratification of the races. We argue against a strict Gramscian definition of hegemony and contend that African Americans manipulated stereotypes and Anglo expectations of behavior through complex hidden transcripts of resistance and defiance. See Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Quintin Hoare and Geoffrey Nowell Smith, eds, and trans., (NY: International Publishers, 1971).
[8]Bederman, Manliness and Civilization,17-26, 49; A number of works have brilliantly explored the connections between “civilization,” gender, and white supremacy at the turn of the twentieth century. See especially Louise Michele Newman, White Women’s Rights: The Racial Origins of Feminism in the United States (NY: Oxford University Press, 1999), and Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the 19th-Century South (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997).
[9]Gary Mormino and George Pozzetta, The Immigrant World of Ybor City: Italians and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885-1985 (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1987), 57, 186, 234-239.
[10]In 1900, African Americans represented 27.7 percent of the population (4,382 of 15,839), 23.7 percent in 1910 (8,951 of 37,782), and 22.3 percent by 1920 (11,531 of 51,608). See Susan Greenbaum, More Than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa (Tampa: University Press of Florida, 2002).
[11]Arthur Raper, et al, “A Study of Black Life in Tampa,” 1927. Courtesy of USF Special Collections. For further discussion of the Afro-Cuban population in Tampa, see Greenbaum, More Than Black. Greenbaum effectively conveys the ways in which black Cubans encountered and reconciled racial and ethnic discrimination in Tampa.
[12]Raper, et al, “A Study of Black Life in Tampa,” 2. See also Robert P. Ingalls, Urban Vigilantes in the New South: Tampa, 1882-1936 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988). Ingalls traces the rise in urban vigilante violence directed against Tampa’s minority populations at the turn of the century as immigrants and African Americans settled in the region in increasing numbers. In her study of women's activism in Tampa, Nancy Hewitt states that, "The fear of Black domination...had been growing in Tampa since the turn of the century, as national diatribes against race suicide merged with significant increases in African American and Latin populations in the city." Nancy A. Hewitt, Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s - 1920s (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001).
[13]Walter T. & Virginia M. Howard, “Family, Religion, and Education: A Profile of African-American Life in Tampa, Florida, 1900-1930,” The Journal of Negro History 79:1 (Winter, 1994), 3.
[14]“Buried in the Backyard,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 13 April, 1896.
[15]“Pastor Commit Arson?,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 4 July, 1899.
[16]“Pastor Commit Arson?,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 4 July, 1899.
[17]“Buried in the Backyard,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 13 April, 1896.
[18]“Assassination Sam is Active,” Tampa Daily Times, 16 September, 1912.
[19]“Some Scrub Shooting,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 13 February, 1896, emphasis added.
[20]“Meachem Was Mending,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 14 February, 1896.
[21]“Two Killed; Negro Dance” Tampa Morning Tribune, 29 January, 1901.
[22]“Buried in the Backyard,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 13 April, 1896.
[23]“Meachem Was Mending,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 14 February, 1896.
[24]Tampa Daily Times, 7 October, 1912.
[25]“Chasing a Negro, Officer Shot Thrice,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 23 July, 1901, and “Manhunt for Maas Bros. Burglar, Tampa Morning Tribune 3 June, 1900.
[26]Tampa Daily Times, 7 October, 1912.
[27]Ibid.
[28]See “Negroes Aroused,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 13 June, 1899; “Manhunt for Maas Bros. Burglar,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 3 June, 1900; “Posse Looking for Negro Brute,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 27 July, 1899; “Assault Fiend Arrested,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 29 December, 1897; The subheading of the Meachem story encapsulated many of these elements by declaring that, “A Policeman Pops a Colored Preacher and His Paramour.”
[29]“Black Brute Seeks Noose,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 15 June, 1904; Another illustrative example appeared during “an exciting man-hunt” for Mitchell Hubbard who stood accused of robbing the local Maas Brothers. See “Manhunt for Maas Bros. Burglar,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 3 June, 1900.
[30]“Police Kill Man in Scrub,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 7 December, 1900, emphasis added.
[31]“Some Scrub Shooting,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 13 February, 1896 and “Police Kill Man in Scrub,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 7 December, 1900.
[32]“His Good Angel,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 17 April, 1912.
[33]See, for example: “Reform is Racy,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 9 August, 1895; “Negroes Sent Up; Robbery Charged,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 17 April, 1912.
[34]Tampa Daily Times, 18 September, 1912.
[35]Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (NY: Colombia University Press, 1999), 25. Scott writes that, "The term 'gender' suggests that relations between the sexes are a primary aspect of social organization ... [and] the terms of male and female identities are in large part culturally determined." In our case, the Anglo construction of gender identity served as a standard by which African-American identities and behavior were measured to be inferior.
[36]See “Mob Clamored for Negro Brute,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 6 January, 1903, and “An Atrocious Assault,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 25 December, 1897.
[37]“Negro Attacks a Cuban Woman,” Tampa Morning Tribune, 11 August, 1899.
[38]Foucault, “Truth and Power,” 119.
[39]Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 23.
[40]Quote is taken from: Bederman, Manliness and Civilization, 49. Martha Hodes provides a discussion of the politicization and racialization of sexuality in the postbellum US, writing that, “The construction of white female purity in the post-Reconstruction South was dependent upon images of black men as bestial, and a white woman’s innocence was contingent upon assault by a black man rather than a white man.” Hodes, White Women, Black Men, 198.