The perils of the back seat: Date rape, race and gender in 1950s America

Gender and History

Volumn 20, Issue 1, 2008, Pages 27-47

  Dorr, Lisa Lindquist ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

GENDER; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; RACE; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; VIOLENCE;

NORTH AMERICA; UNITED STATES;

EID: 40749111831     PISSN: 09535233     EISSN: 14680424     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0424.2007.00506.x     Document Type: Article

References (150)

1. Where the Boys Are, Director: Henry Levin, 1960. Susan Douglas gives the movie a more optimistic reading, suggesting that at the end Merritt will still consider premarital sexual experimentation.
2. See Susan Douglas, Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1994), pp. 78-80.
3. This article focuses on the dating behaviour of white teens. In part, this reflects the erasure of diversity from mainstream popular culture. Magazines, movies and newspapers assume that their readers, like their subjects, were white unless they specifically sought to portray black Americans. In the one sociological study of dating among African American teenagers that I was able to find, the authors reported that, while black teenagers in 1964 dated, they did not engage in public recreation like movies and soda shops to the extent that white teenagers did. The authors attributed this difference to the lack of financial resources among black teenagers required for this kind of date. See George E. Dickinson, 'Dating Behavior of Black and White Adolescents before and after Desegregation', Journal of Marriage and the Family 37 (1975), pp. 602-8, here p. 604. Magazines that focused on African Americans, such as Jet and Ebony, acknowledged dating culture among black teenagers. Rachel Devlin, in her study of post-war father-daughter relationships, also describes some similarities between the interests of middle-class black daughters and their white counterparts.
4. See Rachel Devlin, Relative Intimacy: Fathers, Adolescent Daughters, and Postwar American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), pp. 127-40. There is very little scholarly analysis of the treatment of black women as rape victims, in part because until the 1950s black women found it very difficult to have their charges of rape prosecuted by the legal system. Stereotypes that black women were innately promiscuous made it easy for perpetrators to claim black women consented to intercourse.
5. See Dawn Rae Flood, '"They Didn't Treat Me Good": African American Rape Victims and Chicago Courtroom Strategies during the 1950s', Journal of Women's History 17 (2005), pp. 38-61
6. Lisa Lindquist Dorr, White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), pp. 231-40.
7. For a more detailed discussion of this model, see Cynthia Eagle Russett, Sexual Science: The Victorian Construction of Womanhood (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989)
8. Sander L. Gilman, Difference and Pathology: Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985).
9. This article builds on the recent historical re-examination of gender and culture in the 1950s. Prominent works on gender and the 1950s include Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988)
10. Benita Eisler, Private Lives: Men and Women of the Fifties (New York: Franklin Watts, 1986)
11. Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the Fifties (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992)
12. Brett Harvey: The Fifties: A Women's Oral History (New York: Harper Collins, 1993)
13. Joanne Meyerowitz (ed.), Not June Cleaver:WOmen and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994)
14. Jessica Weiss, To Have and To Hold: Marriage, the Baby Boom, and Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000)
15. Lynn Peril, Pink Think: Becoming a Woman in Many Uneasy Lessons (New York:W.W. Norton, 2002)
16. Georganne Scheiner, 'Look at Me, I'm Sandra Dee: Beyond a White, Teen Icon', Frontiers 22 (2001), pp. 87-106, esp. pp. 39-40
17. Beth Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988).
18. Date rape or acquaintance rape were terms coined in the 1970s to refer to forced sexual encounters involving 'people who meet in a social setting, a scenario that the woman would have no reason to think might lead to acts of forced sex'. While date rape meets the legal definition of rape, involving sexual relations by force and without the consent of the victim, many see it as a 'lesser' crime either because the woman somehow 'asked for it' or because the associated trauma is presumed to be less because she knew her attacker. Later research, beginning in the early 1980s forcefully argued against these assumptions. See Peggy Reeves Sanday, A Woman Scorned: Acquaintance Rape on Trial (New York: Doubleday, 1996), pp. 18-19.
19. Numerous articles in magazines such as Ladies Home Journal, Better Homes and Gardens, Woman's Home Companion and Good Housekeeping - magazines unsurprisingly aimed at mothers, especially those concerned about their daughters - expressed concern about going steady as a new form of heterosexual interaction. While these publications were not specifically southern, they were national in scope, reflecting concerns that pervaded the lives of southerners as well as parents in other regions of the country. There are no specifically southern periodicals of this variety, but advice columns, such as 'Judy Brown Advises' in the Birmingham News, shared the same concerns about dating as did the women's magazines.
20. 'Going Steady ... A National Problem', Ladies Home Journal 66 (July 1949), p. 44.
21. See e.g., Samuel Harman Lowrie, 'Dating Theories and Student Responses', American Sociological Review 16 (1951); pp. 334-40, esp. p. 337
22. Robert D. Herman, 'The "Going Steady" Complex: A Re-Examination', Marriage and Family Living 17 (1955), pp. 36-40, esp. p. 37.
23. For the classic study examining dating in the 1920s and 1930s, see Willard Waller, 'The Rating and Dating Complex', American Sociological Review 2 (1937), pp. 727-34.
24. Robert J. Bell and Jay B. Chaskes, 'Premarital Sexual Experience among Coeds, 1958 and 1968', Journal of Marriage and the Family 32 (1970), pp. 81-4, here p. 82
25. William J. Cameron and William F. Kenkel, 'High School Dating: A Study in Variation', Marriage and Family Living 22 (1960), pp. 74-6, here p. 75.
26. See John R. Christ, 'High School Dating as a Behavior System', Marriage and Family Living 15 (1953), pp. 23-8, esp. p. 25.
27. Quote in Clark W. Blackburn, 'True Love vs. Sexual Curiosity', Cosmopolitan 149 (October 1960), p. 54.
28. 'The Preppers Speak - Pros and Cons of the Question: Should Teenagers Go Steady?' Birmingham News, 5 October 1952, p. D-2.
29. Ruth Connor and Edith Flinn Hall, 'The Dating Behavior of College Freshman and Sophomores', Journal of Home Economics 44 (1952), pp. 278-81, here p. 280
30. 'Going Steady ... A National Problem', p. 128.
31. 'Going Steady ... A National Problem', p. 128.
32. Charles W. Cole, 'American Youth Goes Monogamous', Harper's Magazine 214 (March 1957), p. 31.
33. 'Why Do Prom Girls Put Up With the Cartel System of Dating?', Saturday Evening Post 222, 15 April 1950, p. 12.
34. 'Teen Agers Shouldn't Go Steady' [Family Weekly section], Anniston Star, 26 January 1958, pp. 6-7.
35. John Laurence, 'Society, Sex and the Single Woman', Coronet (March 1953), p. 71
36. Sidney G. Morton, 'We're Misleading Our Teenagers about Love', Today's Health 43 (December 1956), p. 28.
37. Robert Stein, 'Sex on the Campus?', Coronet 28 (May 1950), p. 101.
38. Joseph Newton, 'Seven Steps to a Happy Husband', [Family Weekly section], Anniston Star, 5 January 1958, p. 6.
39. Helen Mayer Hacker, 'The New Burdens of Masculinity', Marriage and Family Living 19 (August 1957), p. 228.
40. Miriam Reumann explores these concerns in depth through national reactions to the release of the Kinsey Reports on male and female sexuality. She argues that Americans made an explicit connection between sexual behaviour and national character. See Miriam G. Reumann, American Sexual Character: Sex, Gender, and National Identity in the Kinsey Reports (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). Other historians have also noted the conflicting messages that Americans received about the importance of family.
41. See Wendy Kline, Building a Better Race: Gender, Sexuality, and Eugenics from the Turn of the Century to the Baby Boom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), pp. 124-56
42. Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992), pp. 23-41
43. Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (New York: Free Press, 1988), pp. 177-201.
44. The fear of eroding differences between men and women was not invented in the 1950s and existed at least as early as the 1920s. However, it took on a particular context in the midst of the Cold War. See K. A. Cuordileone, '"Politics in an Age of Anxiety": Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960', Journal of American History 87 (2000), pp. 515-45, esp. p. 516.
45. Dr George W. Crane, 'The Worry Clinic', Alabama Journal, 7 January 1957
46. 'Divorce Rate in US Now Fairly Stabilized', Alabama Journal, 9 January 1957, p. 8-A.
47. Jane Whitbread, 'A Report on Current Attitudes toward Chastity', Mademoiselle 49 (July 1959), p. 39.
48. See also Lester A. Kirkendall, Premarital Intercourse and Interpersonal Relations (New York: Julian Press, 1961), pp. 86-9.
49. Movies like That Touch of Mink (1962) and The Apartment (1960) were premised, in part, on the idea that wives did not understand their husbands, that marital sexual relations were unsatisfying for most couples and that it was men's prerogative, even married ones, to pressure available women for sex. The efforts of the male leads to achieve sexual conquests countered the dehumanisation of workplace routine, and literally separated the men from the boys.
50. Whitbread, 'Report on Current Attitudes', p. 39.
51. Hacker, 'The New Burdens of Masculinity', p. 231.
52. Patricia Matthews, 'If Your Son or Daughter is Going Steady', Good Housekeeping 131 (December 1950), p. 53.
53. 'Sex Freedom and Morals in the United States', Ladies Home Journal 66 (June 1949), p. 48.
54. Goodrich C. Schauffler, MD, 'It Could Be Your Daughter', Reader's Digest 72 (April 1958), p. 55.
55. Thelma Bassy, 'Teen Agers Shouldn't Go Steady', [Family Weekly section], Anniston Star, 5 January 1958, pp. 6-7.
56. Margaret Widdemer, 'Cad's Paradise', Good Housekeeping 131 (October 1950), p. 238
57. Blackburn, 'True Love vs. Sex Curiosity', p. 56.
58. Articles like 'The Perils of Promiscuity', Reader's Digest 71 (July 1957), made similar points.
59. Lester Kirkendall tried to determine whether premarital intercourse strengthened or weakened relationships. His results were mixed, reflecting the relative strength or weakness of other factors in the relationship. Lester Kirkendall, Premarital Intercourse, pp. 182-200.
60. John Kord Lagemann, 'Memories that Inhibit Married Love', Coronet 42 (July 1957), pp. 68-70.
61. Peggy Craig, 'What have "Sex Experts" Done to Children?', Coronet 37 (January 1955), p. 113.
62. Albert Ellis, The American Sexual Tragedy (New York: Twayne, 1954), pp. 57-74.
63. See Alexandra Stern, Eugenic Nation:FAults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 154.
64. See Stern, Eugenic Nation, pp. 150-81, esp. pp. 168-9
65. Kline, Building a Better Race, pp. 140-56.
66. The estimates of the time spent necking is from 'The Dating Behavior of College Freshman and Sophomores', p. 279.
67. 'Sex Freedom and Morals in the United States', p. 88.
68. 'Sex Freedom and Morals in the United States', p. 49.
69. 'Sex Freedom and Morals in the United States', p. 86.
70. 'The Dating Behavior of College Freshmen and Sophomores', p. 278.
71. Harold T. Christensen, 'Dating Behavior as Evaluated by High-School Students', American Journal of Sociology 57 (1952), pp. 580-86, here p. 581.
72. 'Going Steady ... A National Problem', p. 131.
73. Whitbread, 'Report on Current Attitudes', pp. 37-40.
74. Abigail Van Buren, 'Things My Mother Never Told Me - Blue Jean Biology', McCall's (September 1959), p. 30.
75. Dr Goodrich Schauffler, 'Today It Could Be Your Daughter', Ladies Home Journal 75 (January 1958), p. 112.
76. Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away: The Hidden History of Women Who Surrendered Children for Adoption in the Decades before Roe v. Wade (New York: Penguin, 2006), p. 33.
77. Kiowa Costonie, How to Win and Hold a Husband
78. quoted in Brett Harvey, The Fifties: A Woman's Oral History (New York: Harper Collins, 1983), p. 1.
79. In a 1959 article in Teens Today, quoted in Peril, Think Pink p. 97.
80. Many southern newspapers carried at least one advice column. Dorothea Dix's column appeared in the Florida Times Union, in Jacksonville, Florida, (along with 'Teen Mail' and 'They Ask Kitte') and the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Letters to Beatrice Fairfax appeared in the Alabama Journal. 'Tips for Teens' and 'Teen Talk' appeared in the Montgomery (Al) Advertiser. 'Ask Judy Brown' was a regular feature of the Birmingham News, while the Atlanta Constitution's readers sent their concerns to the 'Teen Age Mail' column. 'Ask Judy Brown's' queries varied most widely, from money issues in marriage to dating to how to soften rough elbows. Most columns carried numerous letters from young teenagers beset by the pangs of puppy love. Consistently, these teenagers (usually, though not always, girls) were told that they were too young to go steady and should date a wide variety of members of the opposite sex, reflecting adult ambivalence about going steady. That many of these columns were syndicated nationally suggests that the concerns of teens crossed regional boundaries.
81. 'Tips for Teens by Elinor Williams', Montgomery Advertiser, 11 June 1954, p. 10-A
82. 'Beatrice Fairfax', Alabama Journal, 7 January 1957, p. 1-B
83. 'Beatrice Fairfax', Alabama Journal, 11 January 1957, p. 3-B.
84. Women's responsibility for sex control has been well established by other historians. See Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat
85. Tyler May, Homeward Bound
86. Breines, Young, White, and Miserable
87. Eisler, Private Lives. Importantly, while much emphasis was placed on women's virginity, many oral histories of the 1950s confirm that it was one's reputation for virginity rather than its actuality that was important. Many women did have sexual intercourse well before they married.
88. See Elizabeth Alice Clement, Love for Sale: Courting, Treating, and Prostitution in New York City, 1900-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 258.
89. There was, of course, also a persistent double standard. Dorothea Dix, for example, when asked by a young man if he should marry a woman he loved who had had six previous affairs without regrets, replied that he would never be able to trust her once they married. 'Dorothea Dix', New Orleans Times-Picayune, 16 February 1951, p. 34.
90. Cunningham v. State, 85 Ga. App. 216, 68 Southeastern Reporter, 614.
91. Rushing v. State, 94 Southern 2d 770. Rushing was convicted by an Alabama court of carnal knowledge of a girl over twelve but under sixteen.
92. Manning v. State of Florida, 93 Southern 2d 716.
93. Kirkwood v. McFarland, 47 Southern 2d 74. The case was brought by Kirkwood's father as she was an unemancipated minor over the age of eighteen.
94. Eugene J. Kanin, 'Male Aggression in Dating-Courtship Relations', American Journal of Sociology 63 (1957), pp. 197-204, here p. 197.
95. See also Clifford Kirkpatrick and Eugene Kanin, 'Male Sex Aggression on a University Campus', American Sociological Review 22 (1957), pp. 52-8, esp. p. 53.
96. Kanin, 'Male Aggression in Dating', p. 201.
97. Kirkpatrick and Kanin, 'Male Sex Aggression', p. 53.
98. Kanin, 'Male Aggression in Dating', pp. 202-3
99. Kirkpatrick and Kanin, 'Male Sex Aggression', pp. 56-7.
100. Johnson, 'Sex and the College Girl', p. 60.
101. Warren Breed, 'Sex, Class, and Socialization in Dating', Marriage and Family Living 18 (1956), pp. 137-44, here pp. 140 and 142.
102. Winston W. Ehrmann, Premarital Dating Behavior (New York: Henry Holt, 1959), p. 195.
103. See also Kirkendall, Premarital Intercourse, pp. 56-77.
104. Whitbread, 'Report on Current Attitudes', p. 39.
105. Breed, 'Sex, Class, and Socialization in Dating', p. 140.
106. Robert L. Karen, 'Some Variables Affecting Sexual Attitudes, Behavior and Inconsistency', Marriage and Family Living 21 (1959), pp. 235-9, here p. 239.
107. Breines, Young, White, and Miserable, p. 119.
108. I thank Jack Johnson and the Organization of American Historians audience for raising this point when I presented a version of this article at the OAH 2004 Annual Meeting in Boston, Massachusetts.
109. See Ann Fessler, The Girls Who Went Away.
110. Dr Geolo McHugh with J. Robert Moskin, 'What Americans Need to Learn about Sex: The McHugh Report', Colliers, 9 November 1956, pp. 36-40, esp. p. 38
111. Eisler, Private Lives, p. 131. Eisler believes that the myth that you could not get pregnant the first time was 'the number one myth' when she was in college, and was responsible for more unwanted pregnancies than all the other myths, including the need for simultaneous orgasm to achieve conception, combined.
112. Helene Deutsch, Psychology of Women (1944)
113. in Susan Brownmiller, Against Her Will: Men, Women, and Rape (New York: Bantam, 1975), p. 252. Brownmiller sharply criticised Deutsch's theories for offering men an iron-clad defence for rape - that all women, deep down, wanted it to occur, and therefore consented subconsciously. Deutsch was often quoted in popular articles on women and sexuality in the 1950s.
114. See e.g, Glanville Williams, 'Corroboration - Sexual Cases', Criminal Law Review (October 1962), pp. 662-71
115. Note, 'Corroborating Charges of Rape', Columbia Law Review 67 (1967), pp. 1,137-8
116. Note, 'The Resistance Standard in Rape Legislation', Stanford Law Review 18 (1966), p. 682
117. Note, 'Forcible and Statutory Rape: An Exploration of the Operation and Objectives of the Consent Standard', Yale Law Review 62 (1952), pp. 52-68.
118. Duckett v. State of Alabama, 73 Southern 2d, 773.
119. Teague v. State of Georgia, 67 Southeast Reporter 2d 467, quote on p. 469.
120. Chakejian's casewas not covered in the Charlottesville paper, though the Richmond Times-Dispatch covered the trial extensively because his alleged victim was a Richmond native. A summary of the trial appeared on 1 March 1957. See also, Commonwealth v. Richard N. Chakejian, Law Order Book #24, 197, February Term, 1957, Charlottesville Corporation Court, Charlottesville, Virginia.
121. Breed, 'Sex, Class, and Socialization in Dating', p. 141.
122. For a discussion of sexual coercion on dates in the 1920s, see Lisa Lindquist Dorr, 'Fifty Percent Moonshine and Fifty Percent Moonshine: Social Life and CollegeYouth Culture in Alabama, 1913-1933', in Ted Ownby (ed.), Manners and Southern History (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), pp. 45-75, esp. p. 58.
123. Bailey, From Front Porch to Back Seat, p. 90.
124. Numerous historians have explored the role of the black beast rapist in southern culture and race relations. This mythical creature grew in stature in the late nineteenth century, and was routinely trotted out to justify lynching and other aspects of racial terror used to control the economic, social and political power of African Americans. At the same time, however, while the rhetoric about the black beast rapist was fierce, it did not always predict how white southerners would respond to allegations of black-on-white rape. See Martha Hodes, White Women, Black Men: Sex across the Color Line in the Nineteenth Century South (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1997)
125. Diane Miller Sommerville, Rape and Race in the Nineteenth Century South (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005)
126. Dorr, White Women, Rape.
127. Jackie Cordle Paper, May 2002, in possession of author.
128. Being in the back seat implied greater degrees of intimacy than even the front seat, as men were not hampered by the steering wheel. Some women even looked on the steering wheel as an ally in their efforts to fend off aggressive dates. See Harvey, The Fifties, p. 6.
129. Shay v. State of Mississippi, 90 Southern 2d 209, quotes at pp. 209, 210, 211.
130. State of Louisiana v. Labat, 75 Southern 2d 333.
131. Taylor v. State of Alabama, 97 Southern 2d 802, quotes at p. 803.
132. For a complete discussion of rape as part of the struggle for civil rights, see Dorr, White Women, Rape, pp. 205-43.
133. Commonwealth v. Garland Warren Marshall, Case 8097, 8098, 8099, 8100
134. Commonwealth v. Dan L. Thomas, Jr, Case 8101, 8102, 8103, 8104
135. Commonwealth v. William Robinson, Case 8105, 8106, 8107, 8108
136. Commonwealth v. John Camillous Smith, Case 8109, 8110, 8111, 8112, Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Fairfax, Virginia. The maximum punishment under Virginia law for rape was the death penalty or life in prison.
137. Virginia Foster Durr, Outside the Magic Circle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), p. 66.
138. The rape cases that began to appear in Virginia courts in the 1950s brought by black women against white men revealed how vulnerable black women were to gangs of white men, even when they were on a date. See Dorr, White Women, Rape, pp. 231-42
139. Danielle L. McGuire, '"It Was Like All of Us Had Been Raped": Sexual Violence, Community Mobilization, and the African American Freedom Struggle', Journal of American History 91 (2004) pp. 906-31, here p. 923.
140. Crandall Mackey to Governor Davis, 2 December 1919, Commonwealth v. Joe Thomas, Petition for Conditional Pardon, 29 January - 6 February 1920, Executive Papers, Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.
141. State v. Floyd, 174 SC 288 (1934), at p. 332.
142. Legions v. Commonwealth, 181 Va. 89 (1943), at pp. 91-2.
143. Richmond Afro-American, 4 August 1951, 11 August 1951, 18 August 1951, 1 September 1951. The white press did not cover the case other than to note that police had released the men.
144. See the Richmond News-Leader, 10 August 1951, 23 August 1951.
145. I thank Kari Frederickson for bringing this case to my attention. My description of events is from her book, The Dixiecrat Revolt and the End of the Solid South, 1931-1968 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), pp. 209-13. The case and its coverage in the black press ignited a political controversy.
146. Tolbert had insufficient funds to appeal against his conviction but he and his supporters may have tried to have his sentence commuted to life in prison. It was a frequent strategy in Virginia.
147. See Pre-Sentence Investigation, John Camillous Smith, 23 March 1956, p. 2, Commonwealth v. John Camillous Smith, Felonious Assault No. 8110, Circuit Court of Fairfax County, Fairfax, Virginia.
148. Danielle McGuire makes the connection between black women's sexual exploitation the growth of protest organisations that became the civil rights movement. She argues that black women created a culture of testimony rather than one of dissemblance, making black women's sexual integrity an issue of civil rights. See McGuire, 'It was Like All of Us'.
149. See also, Dorr, White Women, Rape, pp. 209-43.
150. Virginia Foster Durr, Freedom Writer, Letters from the Civil Rights Years, Patricia Sullivan (ed.) (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 79.