| Reverse of photograph depicting warning note
on pine tree. Ink inscription: "Warning, The answer of the Anglo-Saxon race to black brutes who would attack the womanhood of the South." Grace Elizabeth Hale documents the ambiguity of sexual power and the evolution of sexual roles between white men, white women, and black males in her book Making Whiteness. She discusses Jean Toomer's 1923 poem "Portrait in Georgia," which transforms a white woman into a lynched black man: Hair - braided chestnut, coiled like a lyncher's rope, Eyes - fagots, lips - old scars, or the first red blisters, Breath - the last sweet scent of cane, And her slim body, white as the ash of black flesh after flame. |