Sexual Reckonings: Southern Girls in a Troubling Age

by Susan K. Cahn

Overview

Sexual Reckonings is the fascinating tale of adolescent girls coming of age in the South during the most explosive decades for the region. Focusing on the period from 1920 to 1960, Susan Cahn reveals how both the life of the South and the meaning of adolescence underwent enormous political, economic, and social shifts. Those years witnessed the birth of a modern awareness of adolescence and female sexuality that clashed mightily with the white supremacist and patriarchal legacies of the old South. As youth staked its claim, the bodies and beliefs of southern girls became the battlefield for a transformed South, which was, like them, experiencing growing pains.

Cahn reveals how young women, both white and black, were seen as the South's greatest hope and its greatest threat. Viewed as critical actors in every regional crisis, from the economic recession and urban migrations of the 1920s to the racial conflicts precipitated by school desegregation in the 1950s, female teenagers became the conspicuous subjects of social policy and regional imagination. All the while, these adolescents pursued their own desires and discovered their own meanings, creating cracks in the twin pillars of the Jim Crow South—"racial purity" and white male dominance—that would soon be toppled by the student-led civil rights movement.

Sexual Reckonings is an amazingly intimate look at a time of deep personal exploration and profound cultural change for southern girls and for the society they inhabited, a powerful account of the clash between a society's fears and the daily lives and aspirations of its most prized, and unpredictable, population.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674063938
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/05/2012
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Susan K. Cahn is Professor of History at the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Scarlett Redux

1. "Holding Excitement in Their Hands": The Southern "Girl Problem"

2. Spirited Youth or Fiends Incarnate?

3. "Just as Much a Menace": Race and Sex Delinquency

4. "A Head Full of Diamonds": Fact, Fiction, and African American Girls' Sexuality

5. "Living in Hopes": An Economy of Desire

6. Sex, Science, and Eugenic Sterilization

7. The World War II Pickup Girl and Wartime Passions

8. School Days: Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic, and Romance

9. Would Jesus Dance? The Dangerous Rhythms of Rock 'n' Roll

10. The Sexual Paradox of High School Desegregation

Conclusion: Sex, Memory, and the Segregated Past

Notes

Acknowledgments

Index

What People are Saying About This

Sexual Reckonings offers a fascinating analysis of female adolescence in the context of racial, class and cultural upheavals across the twentieth-century South. Cahn transforms our understandings of girlhood and womanhood, sex and society, in the South and the nation, during the critical decades from 1920-1960.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

Carefully researched and beautifully written, Sexual Reckonings forges a new path by tying the history of southern adolescence to the South's own coming of age.
— Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Nancy A. Hewitt

Sexual Reckonings offers a fascinating analysis of female adolescence in the context of racial, class and cultural upheavals across the twentieth-century South. Cahn transforms our understandings of girlhood and womanhood, sex and society, in the South and the nation, during the critical decades from 1920-1960.
— Nancy A. Hewitt, Rutgers University

Pete Daniel

Sexual Reckonings is a significant analysis of how black and white teenage young women reshaped their world in the first sixty years of the twentieth century. Based on extensive and imaginative sources, Cahn's work is nuanced, challenging, and brilliantly argued.
— Pete Daniel, author of Toxic Drift: Pesticides and Health in the Post-world War II South

Annelise Orleck

Sexual Reckonings dramatically illustrates how attempts to regulate girls' sexual behavior were at the heart of power relations in the pre-Civil Rights South. Compelling and original, Cahn's recovery of the dreams, hopes, and heartbreaks of poor white and African-American girls of the mid-20th century South have continued to haunt me, long after finishing this remarkable book.
— Annelise Orleck, author of Storming Caesars Palace: How Black Mothers Fought Their Own War on Poverty

Editorial Reviews

Cahn traces female adolescence in the South from the flapper era through Elvis Presley and rock and roll and the budding civil rights movement, and the vast differences that race and class made in the judgment and treatment of female adolescent behavior. She examines the particularly volatile mixture of race and class for which the South has become famous, as the society struggled to control girls—black and white—to maintain racial purity and social conventions. This is a fascinating look at how young women fit into and affected southern patriarchy and notions of racial purity.

Booklist - Vanessa Bush

This impressive history of the sexual cultures of southern black and white adolescent girls pays careful attention to social fears of sexual danger, state regulatory policies, and the experience of the young women who reshaped sexual meanings over the first half of the twentieth century. Cahn persuasively argues for the centrality of adolescent female sexuality to southern politics, from the changing racial focus of forced sterilizations to the shifting grounds for white resistance to school desegregation.

Estelle B. Freedman

Sexual Reckonings dramatically illustrates how attempts to regulate girls' sexual behavior were at the heart of power relations in the pre-Civil Rights South. Compelling and original, Cahn's recovery of the dreams, hopes, and heartbreaks of poor white and African-American girls of the mid-20th century South have continued to haunt me, long after finishing this remarkable book.

Annelise Orleck

This work makes a useful contribution to the growing field of the study of girls.

Choice - E. Thompson

Carefully researched and beautifully written, Sexual Reckonings forges a new path by tying the history of southern adolescence to the South's own coming of age.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

As public policy wars over morality rage unabated, the bodies of teenage girls and young women remain the battleground, making this book an urgent read...Cahn weaves the experiences and voices of girls from all classes and both black and white communities to show how girls used economic, social and cultural capital to redefine Victorian moral codes and pursue sexual experiences once viewed as the preserve of men.

Ms. - France Winddance Twine

Susan K. Cahn offers an empowering, well-researched, and refreshing look at the South's transformation from the period of 1920 to 1960. She relies on anecdotal evidence of countless adolescent girls, integrating their narratives with the larger narrative of Southern political, economic and cultural change...From poor white girls targeted for "reform" to wartime pickup girls to the rock 'n' roller, Cahn gives readers an insightful understanding of history that will leave you intrigued, indignant, entertained and even confer value on anyone who has suffered injustices, nourishing the possibility for change.

Feminist Review - Sofia Marin

Sexual Reckonings offers a fascinating analysis of female adolescence in the context of racial, class and cultural upheavals across the twentieth-century South. Cahn transforms our understandings of girlhood and womanhood, sex and society, in the South and the nation, during the critical decades from 1920-1960.

Nancy A. Hewitt

Sexual Reckonings is a significant analysis of how black and white teenage young women reshaped their world in the first sixty years of the twentieth century. Based on extensive and imaginative sources, Cahn's work is nuanced, challenging, and brilliantly argued.

Pete Daniel

This work makes a useful contribution to the growing field of the study of girls.
— E. Thompson

Choice

As public policy wars over morality rage unabated, the bodies of teenage girls and young women remain the battleground, making this book an urgent read...Cahn weaves the experiences and voices of girls from all classes and both black and white communities to show how girls used economic, social and cultural capital to redefine Victorian moral codes and pursue sexual experiences once viewed as the preserve of men.
— France Winddance Twine

Ms.

Susan K. Cahn offers an empowering, well-researched, and refreshing look at the South's transformation from the period of 1920 to 1960. She relies on anecdotal evidence of countless adolescent girls, integrating their narratives with the larger narrative of Southern political, economic and cultural change...From poor white girls targeted for "reform" to wartime pickup girls to the rock 'n' roller, Cahn gives readers an insightful understanding of history that will leave you intrigued, indignant, entertained and even confer value on anyone who has suffered injustices, nourishing the possibility for change.
— Sofia Marin

Feminist Review

Cahn traces female adolescence in the South from the flapper era through Elvis Presley and rock and roll and the budding civil rights movement, and the vast differences that race and class made in the judgment and treatment of female adolescent behavior. She examines the particularly volatile mixture of race and class for which the South has become famous, as the society struggled to control girls—black and white—to maintain racial purity and social conventions. This is a fascinating look at how young women fit into and affected southern patriarchy and notions of racial purity.
— Vanessa Bush

Booklist