“THE INHERITANCE OF BLOOD FIRST”: THREE WHITE WOMEN’S TAKES ON
MISCEGENATION AND THE “TRAGIC MULATTA”
by
EMMA ROUNTREE(Under the Direction of Scott Reynolds Nelson)
ABSTRACTThis thesis examines the way three white women writers from Georgia portrayedmiscegenation and mixed-race female characters by utilizing the literary trope of the “tragic
mulatta,” with the purpose of determining how Southern white women viewed these subjects inthe first half of the twentieth century. The three novels discussed are A Son of Carolina by Genie
Orchard Stovall (1909), White-Blood by Vara A. Majette (1924), and Strange Fruit by Lillian
Smith (1944). Using textual analysis of the ways in which characters speak of miscegenation andthe ways in which the authors portray the “tragic mulatta” characters, historical insights into theways in which white Southern women viewed miscegenation can be gleaned. Most significantly,
this thesis shows that these authors all placed the blame for interracial sex on white men, as
opposed to the more traditional narratives of the black male rapist or the black female seductress.
INDEX WORDS:

Miscegenation, Tragic mulatto/a, A Son of Carolina, Genie Orchard
Stovall, White-Blood, Vara A. Majette, Strange Fruit, Lillian Smith

“THE INHERITANCE OF BLOOD FIRST”: THREE WHITE WOMEN’S TAKES ON
MISCEGENATION AND THE “TRAGIC MULATTA”

by

EMMA ROUNTREE
B.A., Guilford College, 2016

A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The University of Georgia in Partial Fulfillmentof the Requirements for the Degree

MASTER OF ARTSATHENS, GEORGIA
2018© 2018
Emma Rountree
All Rights Reserved

“THE INHERITANCE OF BLOOD FIRST”: THREE WHITE WOMEN’S TAKES ON
MISCEGENATION AND THE “TRAGIC MULATTA”

by

EMMA ROUNTREE

Electronic Version Approved:
Suzanne Barbour
Dean of the Graduate School
The University of Georgia
May 2018

Major Professor:

Scott Reynolds Nelson

Committee:

John Inscoe
Jennifer Palmer

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
CHAPTER
1. INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................1
2. THE “TRAGIC MULATTO” ............................................................................4
3. ANTI-MISCEGENATION LAW ......................................................................7
4. SUMMARIES OF THE NOVELS ..................................................................15
5. PORTRAYALS OF MULATTA CHARACTERS .........................................18
Gypta ................................................................................................................18
Lissa .................................................................................................................22
Nonnie ..............................................................................................................27
6. VIEWS OF MISCEGENATION .....................................................................32
A Son of Carolina.............................................................................................32
White-Blood .....................................................................................................35
Strange Fruit ....................................................................................................37
7. HISTORICAL AND LITERARY ANALYSIS...............................................39
BIBLIOGRAPHY ..............................................................................................................56

1

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION“I have three daughters but so help me God, I had rather find either one of them killed bya tiger or a bear and gather up her bones and bury them, conscious that she had died in the purityof her maidenhood, than to have her crawl to me and tell me the horrid story that she had been
robbed of the jewel of her womanhood by a black fiend,” South Carolina senator and former
governor “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman declared on the floor of Congress in 1908.1 Many whites in
the Jim Crow South spoke words such as these. Men concerned with protecting the “purity” ofwhite Southern women vocally advocated for strict anti-miscegenation laws as well as both legal
and extralegal punishment for black men who stepped out of line. Simultaneously, however,many white men engaged in sexual activity, often non-consensual, with black women.
Miscegenation – marriage, cohabitation, or sexual relations between members of different races,of particular concern when the relationship produced a child – was officially abhorred bySouthern society and yet an ever-present feature of it. Did white women agree fully with therhetoric of white men, claiming that racially-charged violence was necessary to protect them?
This thesis will examine three novels by white Georgia women. The first, A Son ofCarolina, was published in 1909 by Genie Orchard Stovall (1865-1917). It tells the tale of ayoung mixed-race woman raised as white who faces tragedy when she discovers her true
heritage. The second, White-Blood, published in 1924 by Vara A. Majette (1875-1974), recounts
the tragic consequences of an interracial relationship at a Georgia turpentine ranch. Strange“Sen. John Coit Spooner and Sen. Benjamin Tillman, Senate Debates after the Brownsville Incident(January 1908),” https://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/336tillman.html.
1

2
Fruit, published in 1944 by Lillian Smith (1897-1966), describes the tragic ways an interracial
love affair is affected by small-town Southern culture and the ways in which residents of thattown are affected by the consequences of that relationship.
Why study the way white women portray these topics? To quote Diane Roberts, “because
white women’s books – Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Gone With the Wind, and many in between – havebeen elaborators and transmitters of many of the most powerful representations of blacks inwestern culture. And because the debate over slavery, and later the debate over segregation, hasbeen argued by men publicly, in government, in speeches, but as often (and perhaps with more
power) by women in published appeals and in fiction.”2 The writings of Southern white women
not only offer insights into how Southern white society understood race; they also allow us to see
the ways in which gender complicated the narrative of sex and race. By using novels, we are able
to see the ways in which these women were engaging with the issues. Literature is often areflection of society, and authors can sometimes more freely delve into controversial topics byusing art. Literature was also an outlet for women who were denied access to other spheres ofdebate due to their gender. Studying novels is, of course, not a substitute for other historicalresearch, but it includes the possibility of adding interesting dimensions to an existing
discussion.
I have chosen the first half of the twentieth century as my point for analysis because it isduring this time that fears of interracial sex and love increased, and because most discussions of
the topic of the tragic mulatto feature antebellum abolitionist literature. This period is also
important because it shows the changing understanding of race from an innate biological trait toa cultural construct. My choice to select writers affiliated with the state of Georgia is simply2

Diane Roberts, The Myth of Aunt Jemima: Representations of Race and Region (London: Routledge, 1994), 7.

3
based on the fact that I wished for all the authors I studied to be from the same state, and Georgia
is my home. I am not making any claims that the Georgia narrative is special, as I imagine
similar conclusions could be drawn using literature from other Southern states.
This paper will reveal that these authors, and likely other white women, saw white men
as responsible for the problems of miscegenation and racial tensions because of their sexual
behavior. While this belief most certainly did not preclude racist views, it shows that some white
women saw the narrative of segregation in a different light than white men. This is by no means
an attempt to claim that all women saw things differently. One of Georgia’s most notable
women, Rebecca Latimer Felton, infamously declared in 1897, “If it takes lynching to protect
women’s dearest possession from drunken, ravening beasts, then I say lynch a thousand a
week.”3 While Felton is an extreme example, many white women used the same rhetoric as
white male politicians. However, in these books the tragedy of white men’s behavior is revealed
through the deaths of innocents and the effect of racial violence on whites, but most importantly
through “tragic mulatta” characters. Twice marked by miscegenation, both through their ancestry
and through their romantic relationships, the characters in these novels are tragically affected by
the actions of their white forefathers and lovers, which make their lives difficult and sorrowful.

3

Qtd. in David B. Parker, "Rebecca Latimer Felton (1835-1930)," New Georgia Encyclopedia.

4

CHAPTER TWO
THE “TRAGIC MULATTO”
As both A Son of Carolina and White-Blood are obscure, having been out of print for a
century, scholars have not analyzed them in either an historical or literary sense.4 Strange Fruithas been studied before, but not in the context of these other novels. A variety of sources discuss
the tragic mulatto trope, though, and a few focus on the tragic mulatta specifically. Most works
on the subject look at particular pieces of literature or authors, and this paper will do somethingsimilar.
Writers used the trope of the tragic mulatto in the antebellum period to explore questionsof race and the place of mixed race persons in freedom, though scholars did not name and study
it until the 1930s.5 It is difficult to determine the first author to utilize the trope, but early whitefemale writers, including Lydia Maria Child and Harriet Beecher Stowe, used it as a way ofcreating sympathy for those who were enslaved. White authors were not the only ones to write
characters that fit the trope. Black antebellum authors to use it include William Wells Brown andHarriet Wilson. The trope continued into the postbellum period, as well as the twentieth century,
as is the case in the novels described in this paper. In all periods, the tragic mulatto/a is a personof known (to the reader at least) black and white ancestry or a light-skinned black person. This
person’s race is of crucial importance to their character, and they have experienced some kind of

4

There are no published writings about Stovall. For those interested in Majette, see the one published work on her:Leslie Dunlap, “Vara A. Majette (1875-1974): ‘The Small Voice of a Dissenter’ in the Segregated South.” inGeorgia Women: Their Lives and Times Volume II, ed. Kathleen Clark and Ann Short Chirhart, 40-61. Athens:
University of Georgia Press, 2014.
5
Eva Allegra Raimon, The “Tragic Mulatta” Revisited: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Antislavery
Fiction (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2004), 4-5.

5
tragic circumstances by the end of the novel. Additionally, authors utilized the tragic mulatto, asa person with lighter skin and more European features, to gain sympathy from white audiences
who may not have been willing to completely empathize with dark-skinned black characters.6
Few studies have looked at the important intersection of gender and race within the trope.
The sex of the character is important since, as Eva Allegra Raimon writes, “The very tragedy ofthe figure’s fate depends upon her female gender. The sexual vulnerability of a female lightskinned slave is essential to propel the plot forward and to generate the reader’s sympathy andoutrage.”7 Raimon’s work focuses on abolitionist works of the antebellum period, but sexual
vulnerability due to gender remains central in later works. Writers often portrayed the “tragic
mulatta” as “a sensationalized figure of ruined womanhood.”8 Few studies of white authors in
the twentieth century have been done, as most focus on antebellum works by both black andwhite abolitionists or on black authors of the postbellum period. The works of Stovall, Majette,and Smith therefore fall into a gap in this historiography, which this paper will attempt to rectify
in part. Though this paper cannot offer a full literary analysis of how Southern white women in
the early-twentieth century used the trope, it will make use of three examples to offer insight into
understandings of race, gender, and sex in 1909, 1924, and 1944, most particularly the ways inwhich women judged miscegenation and white men.
Stovall, Majette, and Smith were not the only authors to engage with the issues of
miscegenation and biracial people during the period. Both white and black authors publishedfiction that raised questions about miscegenation.9 Several pieces by white authors wereparticularly prominent, indicating the way in which discussions of miscegenation had become

6

Roberts, 13.
Raimon, 5.
8
Teresa C. Zackodnik, The Mulatta and the Politics of Race (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004), xi.
9Significant black novelists include Charles W. Chesnutt and Nella Larsen.
76part of popular culture. Edna Ferber’s 1926 novel Showboat, which involves a legal investigation
into an interracial couple, was turned into a musical by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II
the next year and led to film adaptations in 1929, 1936, and 1951. William Faulkner’s Absalom,Absalom! (1936) also deals with the ramifications of miscegenation. The combination of raceand sex caused deep-seated anxiety for many Americans. White and black, male and female,North and South, fiction offered a way to explore these anxieties. It is this exploration thatenables novels to provide insight not available in legislation or newspaper accounts, most ofwhich provide more straightforward opinions. Stovall, Majette, and Smith’s novels give us a
glimpse into the evolving way white Southern women dealt with questions of miscegenation.

7

CHAPTER THREE
ANTI-MISCEGENATION LAW
These three novels were written during a period when interracial marriage was illegal,
and society looked down upon interracial sexual relationships and often punished perpetrators
extralegally. In the early years of the twentieth century, many white Americans were becoming
increasingly anxious about racial definition and race-mixing. A significant number of states
passed anti-miscegenation laws during the Progressive Era. Many states made their antimiscegenation legislation more specific and strict than it had been in the days before Jim Crow.
One of the most prominent examples was Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act which enshrined theone-drop rule (any non-white ancestry prevented a person from legally being considered white)
into law. It was passed in 1924, the same year Majette published White-Blood. The 1910s and1920s were a time when definitions of whiteness were becoming narrower – any non-whiteancestry cancelled out all white heritage in the eyes of the law.10 Many white Southerners, fortheir part, felt that they were losing their racial purity.11 Southern racial theorists argued that the
number of mixed-race persons was increasing, and therefore putting the white race in danger.
This fear was fanned by a belief in eugenics that said that black genes would debilitate the whiterace, as well as by a fear of mixed-race people passing as white and the accompanying fear that awhite person might unknowingly marry a person of mixed-race.12 Additionally, as Joel

10

Charles Frank Robinson II, Dangerous Liaisons: Sex and Love in the Segregated South (Fayetteville: The
University of Arkansas Press, 2003), 101.
11
Ibid.
12
Joel Williamson, New People: Miscegenation and Mulattoes in the United States (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1995), 126.

8
Williamson has written, “In the 1920s Negro America was becoming, quite literally, ‘brown
America’” due to the widespread belief held by many social scientists in the 1920s and 1930s
that the black race was becoming increasingly brown as blacks married people of mixed race,
resulting in lighter and lighter generations. 13 These fears led to more restrictive legislation in the
1920s that aimed to prevent white blood lines from being “corrupted” by blacks.14 The primaryconcern of these laws, however, was marriage and/or cohabitation rather than with solelyinterracial sex. The problem, in the eyes of the white authorities, was less the longstanding
practice of interracial sex than it was the existence of affection between people of different races
and any family units that might be formed out of that affection.15 Marriage had to be prohibitedat all costs since it suggested an equality between the races that white society was not ready toaccept. After all, as Rachel F. Moran has written, “[i]f whites could share their emotional lives
and economic fortunes with blacks, how could blacks be anything less than full persons?”16
By the time of Strange Fruit’s publication in 1944, things had changed somewhat. The
primary outlook of Southern whites in the 1940s appears to have been a continuation of willful
ignorance about interracial sex, maintaining criticism of it but with a lessening of the rampant
fear of race-mixing. Anti-miscegenation law was deeply entrenched in society, and the ACLU
and NAACP had difficulty challenging it.17 Williamson discusses Strange Fruit as “[o]ne of themost powerful assaults on the Southern racial establishment” in the first half of the twentiethcentury.18 This was because the novel was an explicit look at interracial sex and love and called

13

Ibid., 127.
Robinson, 102.
15
Ibid., 104.
16
Rachel F. Moran, Interracial Intimacy: The Regulation of Race and Romance (Chicago: The University of
Chicago Press, 2001), 18.
17
Peggy Pascoe, What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2009), 192.
18
Williamson, 136.
14

9
out cases of racial injustice. Since the novel was widely read, it challenged the ability ofSoutherners to pretend racial mixing and other problems did not exist. While Southerners
responded to the novel with anger, they also chose to ignore miscegenation even more. Senator
Theodore Bilbo’s 1947 book Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization argued that white
men could produce thousands of children with black women, but the white race would not becompromised as long as white women remained racially pure.19 Williamson writes, “Thus, in theSouthern white mind in midcentury mulattoes did not mean anything, miscegenation did notmean anything, Lillian Smith did not mean anything, the NAACP did not mean anything, andNegroes were still smiling. All of the warning signals were beyond the sight and sound ofSouthern eyes and ears.”20 Strange Fruit caused such controversy because it intruded on thewhite Southern idea that racial separation was the unchallenged norm.
Anti-miscegenation law relied on belief that interracial sex contravened natural law that
divided the races. To quote Peggy Pascoe, “Americans saw their opposition to interracial
marriage as a product of nature rather than a product of politics.”21 The use of natural law was
the main legal defense of the sexual separation of the races throughout the late nineteenth- andearly twentieth-centuries.22 Legally defining racial differences using the pseudo-science of thetime was difficult, but white lawyers and judges were remarkably successful in maintaining theclassification of races as a legal defense.23 Despite attempts by the NAACP to undermine theidea of race classification, no significant dents were made in anti-miscegenation law until 1948’s
Perez v. Sharp overturned California’s anti-miscegenation legislation.

19

Ibid., 138.
Ibid., 139.
21
Pascoe, 1.
22
Ibid., 70.
23
Ibid., 112.
20

10Views on miscegenation, like anything, were far from uniform, varying not only between
time period and geographic region, but also among individuals themselves. While one can makesome conclusions based on trends, as the discussion of these novels shows, the issue was one thatwas nuanced. This thesis chooses to focus on white Southern women for a reason. Antimiscegenation laws were tied up with questions of gender, especially as women whotransgressed against society’s rules faced harsher punishments. As Pascoe writes, “…the ideathat miscegenation laws applied equally on the basis of gender is more fiction than reality. In
actual practice, the legislators who enacted miscegenation laws and the judges who enforced
them nearly always had particular race-and-gender pairs in mind when they did so. When thosepairs included White women, the tendency to enact, enforce, and elaborate miscegenation laws
was sharper, the tendency to resort to criminal law stronger.”24 White men did not begin toreceive punishment for their sexual indiscretions until the 1890s, when white supremacy became
further enshrined in the law.25 Black women, the lowest group of people in the South’s hierarchy,
never had an easy time of it, and whites often blamed them when white men strayed. No one
stood up for their virtue as white men did for white women. In fact, in the postbellum South,
black women often found themselves in sexual danger from a number of white men, whereas
during slavery, they primarily had to be concerned with the advances of those who had direct
power over them.26 One the other hand, riots broke out in the South over fears that black men
might rape white women, and many black men were lynched for this reason, though as manyscholars have shown, these fears were overblown.27

24

Ibid., 10.
Ibid., 11.
26
Moran, 27.
27
As discussed in works such as: Leon Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (NewYork: Knopf, 1998) and Edward Ayers, The Promise of the New South: Life After Reconstruction, Fifteenth
Anniversary Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). Since this is a familiar narrative, I will notdescribe it in depth.
2511This “protection” of white female virtue in practice served as an effective way tomaintain both white supremacy and patriarchy. White men were able to freely engage in sexual
relations with black women without economic or emotional consequences while cutting off
access to white women for any men except themselves. The possibility of black men engaging insexual intercourse, whether consensual or not, with white women was seen, according to Lisa
Lindquist Dorr, as not only “black men’s rejection of racial subordination,” but also “their desire
to share in patriarchy [by] laying claim to manhood with the same privileges as white men over
women both white and black.”28 Additionally, when white women accused black men of rape,society perceived it as a failure on the part of white men to protect them and forced the men to
take action to punish the accused.29 White men also maintained the power to not only protect
white women but also the ideal of white womanhood itself. Some women’s accusations of rape
were not taken seriously because of class or reputation.30 White men therefore “act[ed] as the
final arbiters of…white women’s behavior” by limiting who they could interact with and bydetermining who was worthy of belief and protection.31
Many women, of course, were not content to accept that white men were blameless in thesexual imbroglio of the New South. While black women had long been vocal about the sexual
crimes of white men, in the late nineteenth century Southern white female reformers began tohold white men responsible for racial tensions. As the biracial Women’s Christian Temperance
Union worked to reform rape laws by raising the age of consent, black members influenced
white women’s understanding of white men’s complicity in the racial and sexual problems of the28

Lisa Lindquist Dorr, White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960 (Chapel Hill: The
University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 23.
29
Ibid., 101, 103.
30
Ibid., 168.
31
Ibid.

12
South.32 As long as whites saw black men as the primary perpetrators of violent and sexual
crimes, white men’s actions largely went under the radar, a result seen by reformers as
threatening all Southern women.33 The campaigns to raise the age of consent, which in manystates was only ten, received significant popular support but also received pushback frompoliticians in power. When rape reform laws were passed, they generally did not go as far as the
WTCU and other reformers wanted, and they failed to put the responsibility primarily on men by
forcing the burden of proof onto the woman (or girl) who had to prove a “chaste” reputation.34
Legislators also twisted the laws so that black and working-class women would not be protectedby them.35 As Leslie Dunlap argues, “What unified opponents was a commitment to a particularconception of manhood, one based on opposition to women participating in politics or using thelaw to protect themselves…[L]egislators…based their opposition on the perceived sexualinterests of particular white men.”36 Lawmakers were not opposed to all laws against rape, as
many pushed for castration as a punishment for rape. However, as these laws would have been
applied exclusively to black men, the legislators’ true reasoning for objecting to the reform ofrape laws becomes clear. This undermined the two goals white women had in reforming theselaws: to protect white women from all men and to uphold white supremacy by stopping white
men from having sex with black women.37
Miscegenation laws were therefore inherently linked to ideas about gender, as well as
those about race. A Son of Carolina and White-Blood, as we shall see, both turn the traditional

Leslie K. Dunlap, “The Reform of Rape Law and the Problem of White Men: Age-of-Consent Campaigns in theSouth, 1885-1910,” in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History ed. Martha Hodes (NewYork: New York University Press, 1999), 356.
33
Ibid., 357.
34
Ibid., 359, 361.
35
Ibid., 361.
36Ibid., 359-60.
37
Ibid., 362.
32

13narrative on its head: white men are the aggressors, the blood traitors, the people who act of theirown accord in knowing defiance of societal norms. While by no means completely redeeming
black actors as black men continue to be the perpetrators of violence, and most certainly notcondoning interracial relationships, Stovall and Majette tell stories that differ from white men’s
narratives. Smith, while actively criticizing white supremacy, still fits in with this narrative,
though with some differences. Interracial relationships still cannot work, though in this case it isbecause society will not allow them, rather than because of inherent differences between blacks
and whites. White men, as the people with the most power, therefore play the biggest role inperpetuating racial violence.
Certain issues relating to the specific context of these novels need to be discussed. First is
the position of miscegenation legislation in the state of Georgia. In Georgia, existing antimiscegenation laws that prohibited marriage between whites and people of African descent weremaintained after the Civil War. As Jim Crow began to develop, the state made its laws stricter.
Legislators revised these laws in 1882 to specifically include anyone who was at least one-eighth
black. In 1927, Georgia followed Virginia’s lead and adopted the one-drop rule.38 Antimiscegenation legislation remained in place in Georgia until the Supreme Court’s 1967 ruling in
Loving v. Virginia overturned such laws. Therefore, all three novels were written during a time
when love between members of different races could not lead to either marriage or acceptance.
The question of marriage is important to consider. Only in A Son of Carolina does the questionof marriage come up. White-Blood and Strange Fruit deal with interracial sex, not marriage.
While these relationships were not necessarily illegal, they were looked down upon and could
result in extreme punishment, particularly if a black man was involved. The novels deal withLeslie Kathryn Tucker, “‘Betwixt and Between’: Race, Law, and Community in the Jim Crow South” (PhD
dissertation, University of Georgia, 2014), 200-1.
38

14
sexual relationships that are illicit not simply because of racial difference, but also because theytake place outside the confines of marriage. Because of anti-miscegenation laws there isabsolutely no way the relationships in these books could result in marriage. Both Wharton andTracy leave the women they want to be with to pursue acceptable relationships with white
women they do not love, while Barron rejects the fiancée he loves once he learns she is black.
Therefore, while the actions of the characters in the novels do not necessarily contravene antimiscegenation laws, they certainly exist within that social context.

15

CHAPTER FOUR
SUMMARIES OF THE NOVELS
A Son of Carolina (1909) tells the tale of a young mixed-race woman who was raised as
white, named Gypta Levering. Gypta’s adoptive parents were Northerners who bought a winterhouse in Charleston after the end of the Civil War. Ruth Levering becomes attached to her new
maid, the former slave Nanny, and promises to always look after her daughter. The child, wholooks white, is taken north by the Leverings after Nanny dies of consumption. As a young
woman in the 1880s, Gypta rejects her rich New York fiancé after falling in love with an
impoverished Southern gentleman, Barron Baxter. A livid Ruth informs both Gypta and Barronof Gypta’s true heritage, a decision which has tragic consequences. Barron calls off theengagement, and Gypta leaves her family permanently to wander the South, now hyper-aware ofher black ancestry. In the final pages of the novel, Gypta and Barron are reunited when Gypta
goes to warn Barron of a plot by black workers to burn down Barron’s plantation house,
Magnolia Hall, and kill him. Gypta is successful in rescuing Barron from the burning building,but she is shot while the two are chased by the arsonists. She dies in Barron’s arms as hesimultaneously grieves her and commends himself for upholding his family’s blood purity.
White-Blood (1924) begins in the 1910s with a turpentine ranch in the fictional
Meskeegee, Georgia, being placed into the hands of Steve Wharton by politician Tom Watkins (athinly veiled stand-in for Georgia politician Tom Watson). After Wharton takes control of theranch, he meets an “octoroon” woman named Lissa who is the “woman” of a mixed-race man
named Bob Scruff. Wharton knows he should resist his attraction to Lissa and is warned about it

16
by other white men. However, Wharton enters into an affair with Lissa anyway. Bob discovers
their relationship and sets out to exact his revenge on Wharton by attacking Louise, the white
woman Wharton has been courting. Lissa stops Bob before he harms Louise (who has fainted),
but the naïve white woman does not correct those who assume that a black man assaulted her.
This leads to the lynching of the cook Dummy, an innocent black man, who had fled upon seeing
the unconscious Louise, understanding he would be blamed for whatever happened. Bob, now
armed, blows up the vats of turpentine and goes into town to cause trouble. He is eventually
killed, but not before a riot breaks out on the turpentine ranch, resulting in its closure.
The rest of the novel deals with the aftermath of these events, particularly from the pointsof view of Wharton’s sister Ria and the lawyer Galen Kearns, both of whom have a more
sympathetic, yet still paternalistic, view of African Americans. Wharton is elected governor andused as a political puppet by Tom Watkins. He enacts racist legislation that unleashes racial
unrest across the state. By the end of the novel, Wharton is a broken man who cannot
acknowledge his son by Lissa, is physically ill, and has likely had a mental break-down due tothe ways Watkins used him. On the other hand, it seems that Ria and Kearns will live a happylife together. It is unknown what happens to Lissa and her child.
Strange Fruit (1944) recounts the relationship between Nonnie Anderson, a collegeeducated black woman, and Tracy Deen, the white son of a doctor, in the fictional Maxwell,
Georgia, in the 1920s. Nonnie becomes pregnant, much to the chagrin of her older sister. Tracy
is dealing with family pressure to join the church and marry his long-term white girlfriend. Aftermuch soul-searching he decides to do this, breaking up with Nonnie in the process. Nonnie’s
brother Ed, who has recently found out about the less-than-honorable way Tracy has treated his
sister, ends up killing Tracy and immediately flees the state. Henry, a loyal servant to the Deen

17family and Tracy’s friend since childhood, is falsely accused of the crime and is lynched, despite
the attempts of several white members of the community to stop it.

18

CHAPTER FIVE
PORTRAYALS OF MULATTA CHARACTERS39
Physical descriptions are important to understanding portrayals of tragic mulatta figures.
Much can be told by the way the author describes the character’s skin color and appearance, as
the entire purpose of the character is to analyze racial mixing. Additionally, personality andbehavior include significant information about whether the author portrays the character in apositive or negative light. Since these three women are not only participating in interracial
relationships but are also the products of them, the way they are portrayed speaks directly toissues of miscegenation. The following sections describe the ways Stovall, Majette, and Smith
write about the physical appearance, personality, and behavior of the characters of Gypta, Lissa,
and Nonnie.

Gypta
Gypta is first described in the novel as “a child of shame,” since she is the child of a slaveand her master.40 When we first see Gypta as a young child, the only physical description we
receive is that she has “big, luminous eyes, staring wondrously about.”41 Her skin color and otherfeatures are not mentioned, but it soon becomes clear to the reader that she appears white. The
Leverings take her north on a ship (possibly through abduction), where she is mistaken for theirdaughter. The young Gypta “was a graceful, beautiful young thing, and seemed to spring into the

For simplicity’s sake, I will at times refer to all three subjects of this paper as mulatta, even though Smith’s
Nonnie is not described as biracial. Despite this, she fulfills the same role as Gypta and Lissa.
40
Genie Orchard Stovall, A Son of Carolina (New York: The Neale Publishing Company, 1909), 41.
41
Ibid., 56.
39

19hearts of all aboard.”42 The Leverings decide to continue the charade and raise her in New Yorkas their adopted daughter. Mrs. Levering feels particularly strongly that Gypta should not be
deprived of privileges simply due to her ancestry. She tells her husband, “…it would be a sin toallow this child on account of a few drops of dark blood to be doomed and branded as aninferior…No one would ever suspect but that she is as pure blooded as you or I.”43 Roy Levering
hesitates, reminding his wife that “the dark vein to which [she] alludes so lightly often produces
qualities deeply inherent and very dangerous and subtle.”44 In the end, his love for the childbrings him around, and he chooses to overlook what he sees as inherently biological racialdifferences. Gypta is transformed into the daughter of Mrs. Levering’s dead Southern whitefriend, and no one, including Gypta herself, is any the wiser.
If there is one word to describe the adult Gypta, it is beautiful. Everyone who sees her isimmediately taken with her, as is evidenced in the first chapter recounting her adult life, set at asociety party. The guests see Gypta as somewhat exotic, and while the portrayal of her as such
would not stand out if the reader did not know her ancestry, Stovall’s decision to write her assuch is telling. Gypta refuses “to wear the innocent, snowy gown and pearls and immaculaterosebuds prescribed by the debutante of good form,” due to the “audacious, reckless ecstasy” ofher “untrammeled soul” and “wild romanticism of her nature.”45 Gypta is further described as
belonging to the tropics:
Beneath this floral arch of palms and waving maze of color Gypta received her guests. So
much a part of it, she seemed a creature of the tropics. Her low brow and her skin withthe rich creamy whiteness of the magnolia, and lips arched with sensual thickness, moist
and scarlet as though she had bitten into a living heart, suggested in the color the warmthand wildness of the jungle. And her eyes! No one on whom those eyes once looked is apt
to recall aught else. Heavy lidded and velvety with slumbrous [sic] tenderness, yet
42

Ibid., 61.
Ibid., 64.
44
Ibid., 65.
45
Ibid., 71.
43

20
holding a spark far in the somber depths that could leap with the glare and glitter of thebeast at bay – eyes and lips the incarnation of passion, a passion that kindled centuries
ago in the tropics.46
This description highlights her ancestry to the reader, exoticizing and romanticizing it. Her
clothes also continue this. She is wearing a “jeweled serpent that girded her waist, writhing andglittering in the diaphanous drapery that wrapped her like a summer sunset, filmy and golden.”47
Perhaps the snake is an allusion to the serpent in the Garden of Eden (and the origin of sin – ofwhich Gypta is the product), or perhaps it is simply an exotic animal. Either way, it is not a pieceof decoration that would generally be found at New York society parties. On her feet Gypta
wears nothing but jeweled sandals. Her wardrobe is noted by the other guests at the party, someof whom make rather telling statements. One guest declares, “‘She’s too dark, and excessively
vulgar.’”48 Another asks, “‘Why doesn’t she dress like other debutantes of good form, in a silkgown of snug, decent fit, instead of poising a la Cleopatra, half nude, with bare feet, on the skinof an animal?’”49
Everyone’s attention is drawn to Gypta: the men all desire her, while the women gossip.
When she dances, everyone else stops, “hypnotized by her unconscious and ravishing grace.”50
One female guest comments, “‘She dances with the abandon of an Abyssinian slave-girl. It’s
shocking! shocking!’”51 Gypta is aware that she is the subject of conversation of middle-agedsociety women. She laughs as she tells one of her many suitors that she overheard one say that,“judging by [Gypta’s] penchant for the lawless in decoration and costume and [her] shocking
style, [she] must be the descendant of some barbaric ancestor.”52 Ruth Levering is also aware of46

Ibid., 72-3
Ibid., 73.
48
Ibid.
49
Ibid.
50
Ibid., 81.
51
Ibid.
52
Ibid., 83.
47

21
the talk about her daughter, but she takes it more seriously. As the guests begin to compare
Gypta’s “dusky beauty” to a bust of Cleopatra, Mrs. Levering becomes nervous since “[a]ny
allusion to the olive-tinge of the girl’s complexion or the beauty of the purple-black curls thatclustered around her head in such profusion always gave Mrs. Levering a vague fear and a desire
to change the subject.”53 Luckily, it is all put down to Gypta’s Southern heritage, considered
exotic enough by Northerners. The reader, on the other hand, knows that Gypta is part black andunderstands that those who surround her are noticing it subconsciously. The comparisons to
Cleopatra and an Abyssinian slave-girl connect her to Africa, as does the description of her
coming from a tropical place and the allusion to a “barbaric ancestor.” She is also a somewhat
sexualized character, though not purposefully on Gypta’s part, and not one considered maliciousor rejected by society. However, for early twentieth-century readers who may have viewed black
women as inherently more sexual, Gypta’s refusal to act the part of an innocent young debutanteand her attractiveness to men could have been put down to her blackness.
Gypta is to marry the wealthy Emon Hamlin, whose fortune will save her parents fromfinancial ruin. A romantic, Gypta is hesitant because she does not love him. When she is saved
from drowning by a poor bank clerk from South Carolina, Gypta’s heart is awakened, and she
ends the engagement to Hamlin. She and Barron Baxter choose to wed, but her mother, trying toprevent the match, reveals Gypta’s racial heritage. Presenting Gypta with the Bible that recorded
her birth, Mrs. Levering declares, “‘See! you are nameless, simply “Nanny’s child,” and thedaughter of lust and bondage. In your veins run riot the bluest blood of the patrician and thedarkest blood of the slave.’”54 Gypta, after gazing at the book with “blank despair,” faints.55 Her

53

Ibid., 93.
Ibid., 209.
55
Ibid.
54

22
perceptions of herself change: she no longer feels that she has a right to remain in the Leveringhome as she is “nameless,” an “outcast” and a “waif.”56
Once her engagement to Barron is ended as well (despite her pointing out to him that hecannot “find the slightest tinge of that tiny dark current” in her skin), Gypta goes south, ill anddetermined to learn more about her people.57 She is now a “social leper and an accursed woman”
who pretends to be white instead of believing herself so.58 Gypta becomes more and moredepressed about her heritage, particularly after she discovers how Southern whites view
mulattoes, as well as after she learns that a black man allegedly murdered a white child and theninadvertently witnesses him being lynched. Overwhelmed by these experiences, Gypta isdetermined to leave when she learns that Barron has returned south and she hears about a plot
devised by a group of black laborers to murder him. Here Gypta turns into a dramatic heroine,rushing to save the love of her life, and succeeding, though losing her own life in the process.

Lissa
When Steve Wharton first encounters Lissa at a spring, he initially thinks she is white.
Wharton touches his hand to the brim of his hat as a sign of respect; however he then realizes
that this woman is in fact black, and “when he realized his mistake, a quick angry red surged
over his face and neck, finding expression for his stupidity in a swift audible swear.”59 Worse for
Wharton, he knows that Lissa recognized his mistake – “the insolence of her eyes showed
that.”60 This accidental subversion of racial norms sets up the unusual nature of both Wharton

56

Ibid., 223.
Ibid., 230.
58
Ibid., 240.
59
Vara A. Majette, White-Blood (Boston: Stratford Publishing Company, 1924), 12.
60
Ibid.
57

23
and Lissa’s relationship as well as the unusual nature of Lissa herself. Lissa is a bold woman,
and, though uneducated, she muses on the nature of race.
The first time Wharton asks Lissa what she is, she replies, “I’m an accident - an accident
that could have been foreseen – but wasn’t.”61 Lissa is also aware, that as a woman of color, she
is considered a sexual object by white men - and that she herself is the result of several
generations of that objectification. Several years after her affair with Wharton, Lissa has become
very aware of her position in the United States:
I have no people. I am the hybrid result of the lust of yours and the indolence andshiftlessness of my mother’s. America has done nothing for me or mine…but teach us
vices and hypocrisies, restlessness and dissatisfaction. When we have wanted to progress
it has taken responsibilities away from us and made us contemptible weaklings. It has
imposed upon us the duties of citizenship – without its rewards and privileges. That don’t
breed love of country. My inheritance – like all women of my color – has been to be theplaything of white men until they tire and cast us aside.62
Lissa also frequently expresses disgust with her own heritage. “I’m not nothing but what nature –No, I won’t lay such a blunder on her. She couldn’t have made the stars at night and the dew inthe morning and then made such a mistake like me,” she tells Wharton.63 Later, she declares, “I
hate the black in [Bob’s] blood and mine even more than you do. Oh, Steve, I’m not all to blame
if the white blood in me – as good as your own – cannot endure the low cunning and stupidity ofthe blacks. My soul loathes the very scent of their half animal bodies. Steve I’d burn my own
body if that would burn the black in me that I know drags me down – and makes me and others
like me a plaything for you and others like you.”64 Lissa also feels a connection to her white
heritage. She goes to warn Governor Wharton that his actions will have consequences for whites,saying, “And yet my father’s people are so secure in their self made supremacy that they cannot

61

Ibid., 13.
Ibid., 275-6.
63
Ibid., 50.
64
Ibid., 68.
62

24
or will not see that against this, you, nor yours, nor politics, nor creed, nor all the man-made lawsof the universe will prevail. I give this warning because my father’s blood that is in me cries out
to be preserved.”65 However, Lissa is not considered white, even if her father’s blood “cries out
to be preserved.” She is perpetually caught between black and white, loathing her black ancestry
but constantly being reminded of it by society.
Despite her philosophical musings, Wharton does not consider Lissa to be an emotional
or intellectual equal to whites. Wharton laments that she cannot provide the intellectual
stimulation he wants and muses that she is “incapable of such conflicting emotions.”66 As thereader never gets inside her head, there is not much to challenge Wharton opinion, but Lissa iscertainly shown by her actions as having complex emotions. She is upset when Wharton ends therelationship because he has found a woman of his own “kind.” Lissa’s anger does not stop her,however, from coming to warn him in the middle of the night that Bob has returned and is hellbent on revenge or from stopping Bob from harming the woman who has replaced her in
Wharton’s affections.
Lissa is also a bold and strong woman. Wharton frequently notices her eyes challenging
him – something that simultaneously attracts and repels him. Her words are challenging as well.
At one point, Wharton threatens to hit her, and she responds: “‘Strike,’ she cried exultantly, ‘andlet me prove to you that I have hardly the millionth part of an ounce of my mother’s blood in myveins. The blacks do not give back blow for blow. My kind does – and with interest.’”67 This
seems to indicate that while Lissa views blacks as passive, she, like a white person, will takerevenge against those who harm her. Another exchange between the two also shows how she is65

Ibid., 278.
Ibid., 27, 28.
67
Ibid., 51.
66

25
willing to challenge Wharton, even though he is a white man: “‘Lying is a naturalaccomplishment of your race,’ he snapped. ‘Which one?’ she challenged insolently.”68 This
subversion of racial expectations by Lissa makes her stand out from the other black characters in
the novel and makes her memorable for readers of the 1920s. However, it also emphasizes her
white ancestry. Most of the comments she makes have to do with issues of race, and it seems as
if her mixed blood give her the confidence to say these sorts of things. Certainly, it would not
make her attractive to Wharton if her skin were not so light.
In her portrayal of Lissa, however, Majette does fall back onto stereotypes of the black
woman as a seductress white men cannot resist. Physical descriptions of her abound, and Majettefrequently treats her as an exotic creature. The first description of Lissa is a good example:
At the foot of the spring, where sun and shadow met, a young figure with bare yellow
arms cradling knees indolently huddled on the hot sand. Sitting there in the flooding
sunslant looking composedly back at him, her small shapely head wound in a crimson
turban, her tiny ears weighted with barbarous heavy brass half moons, rows of cheap
beads brilliant with primitive colors circling her slender ivory tinted throat, she might
have been a brilliant bird of the tropics Wharton thought…Her attitude was challengingly
provocative as she allowed her gold shot eyes to rest on Wharton.69
Lissa wears a turban, “barbarous” earrings, and “primitive” beads and reminds Wharton of atropical bird. Even though her skin is light, Lissa is still coded as African; it is the combinationof these two things that makes her exotic. Wharton cannot forget his encounter with Lissa andponders “the mystery of the ivory-tinted, alluring eyed octoroon, in a turpentine camp of gorillafeatured, thick lipped, black women, contented with their as animal featured black males, wasupon him…She was there huddled immobile in the sun, a full breasted, long, sinuous limbed
statue of old ivory, but with the litheness and passion of the tropics wrought into every living

68
69

Ibid., 69.
Ibid., 12.

26
curve.”70 It is Lissa’s whiteness that makes her attractive to Wharton (as opposed to the “gorillafeatured” black women), but it is her blackness that makes her available to him, and he knows it:“He had been born to the perception that every negro woman – even to the eighth generation –was a prostitute and any white man’s booty.”71
Despite this availability, Wharton sees Lissa as dangerous. However, he cannot pull
himself away:
All the imagery of her inheritance, all the passion that lives in the hot deep jungles and on
the shores of tropical seas was alive in her that afternoon. Suddenly there was thrust on
Wharton the knowledge – through memory – that in other epochs of the world’s history it
had been just such women who had been back of the power that had torn down and built
up empires and nations. What, after all, had been the strength of Helen of Troy, Cleopatrawith Antony? Had it been intellect? Hardly. What was Lissa’s that she stung him both toresentment and desire? In a way he sensed that there must be thousands of octoroons andif so what reaction would they establish with the men who came in contact with them.
Even as he pondered he was conscious that the very faint racial odor of Lissa’s body wasoffensive to his instincts.72
Wharton is so enthralled by Lissa that he, in a situation reminiscent of the biblical story ofDavid, Bathsheba, and Uriah, sends Bob off to the most dangerous part of the ranch in the hopethat he will die. Lissa affects Wharton in a way he never before experienced with any other
woman: “He had had the normal man’s usual interest and affairs with women of his own kind;but never before this tormenting ache of body and soul that drew him and repelled him as did thisoctoroon girl.” 73 In fact, everyone, male and female, appears to be drawn by Lissa. Ria,
Wharton’s sister, is struck by Lissa after seeing her dance, and none of the other workers everdance when she does. In this scene, Majette describes Lissa in quite a physical, sensuous manner:“With the scarlet headpiece, from which black ringlets escaped, thrown back to her shoulders

70

Ibid., 14.
Ibid., 28.
72
Ibid., 29.
73
Ibid., 47.
71

27
until the curve of the soft creamy throat pressed against the string of copper coins about it, andthe red gash of her vivid mouth thrust upward, she threw the sinuous lines of her lithe body into
the abandonment of motion, not so much of flesh as the barbaric unbridled abandon of spirit.”74
Lissa’s exotic nature draws the attention of all who see her, but the most damaging attention
comes from white men. Lissa realizes this, telling Wharton, “[N]o one with sense would trust
themselves to the treachery of that current. The waters are not safe…the tide there is deep andstrong. We didn’t have much sense, Steve, when we flung ourselves in and hoped to escape thatcross current. It was against nature and nature’s laws.”75 In the end, however, it is Wharton, not
Lissa, who ends up broken. Lissa has gained awareness and a white son by Wharton, but
Wharton is left with nothing but regret.

NonnieNonnie Anderson is college-educated, with opportunities ahead of her if she would justleave her hometown of Maxwell, Georgia. The town’s residents, both black and white, have
opinions of her. “Whole family been to college! All right niggers though, even if they have. Hada good mother who raised her children to work hard and know their place. Anderson niggers allright. Good as we have in the county,” said some residents of Maxwell.76 Black people are
divided: some think her “[s]tuck up like Almighty,” while others thought it was a “[p]ity ain molike her.”77 Nonnie works as a servant, and though most of the white women say, “I wouldn’t
have her in my house with all her college airs,” they are really just jealous because they know

74

Ibid., 139.
Ibid., 277.
76
Lillian Smith, Strange Fruit (Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 1985), 1.
77
Ibid.
75

28
she is “the best servant in Maxwell.”78 Nonnie is also beautiful, noticed even by white men:“And white boys whistled softly when she walked down the street, and said low words andrubbed the back of their hands across their mouths, for Nonnie Anderson was something to lookat twice, with her soft hair blowing off her face, and black eyes set in a face that God knows by
right should have belonged to a white girl.”79 In fact, it was her attractiveness to white boys thatcaused Nonnie to meet Tracy in the first place. When she was just six years old, a white boy
named Nat tried to molest her, but twelve-year-old Tracy came to the rescue, beginning her
devotion to him. This scene also shows the way white males viewed black women – and in thiscase a very young girl – as belonging sexually to white men. When Tracy defends Nonnie, Nat
responds, “I didn’t know she was yourn.”80
Smith uses the word “white” numerous times to describe Nonnie. While neither of herparents were white, it seems extremely likely that she has white ancestry. Once in the novel she
is referred to as a mulatto by a white character, but at no other time is her heritage described asanything but black.81 Her near-white skin is emphasized, and Smith portrays her as lighter thanher siblings, suggesting that her light skin has a symbolic element. (Nonnie is “pale,” while Bessis “golden yellow” and Ed “light brown.”)82 Her light skin is portrayed as a significant part of her
appeal to men of both races. However, this does not lessen the fact that she is black andeveryone, especially Tracy, knows it. Tracy and Nonnie’s relationship has been going on foryears, but he is still plagued by guilt from it – despite being drawn to her. Tracy wishes that
Nonnie were white. After he finds out that she is pregnant, he thinks, “In the dusk she’s as white78

Ibid., 1, 2.
Ibid., 2.
80
Ibid., 4.
81
Ibid., 301.
82
Ibid., 27.
79

29
as Laura [his sister]. God, if she weren’t a nigger!”83 In fact, he hates when the topic of race evencomes up because it reminds him of the real world: “Negro. She’d said it. Now everything would
be spoiled. Ruined as it always was!”84 But Nonnie thinks about race, which is a constant part ofher life. In fact, her relationship with Tracy and possibly her college education give her anunusual opinion of race: “Race is something – made up, to me. Not real. I don’t – have to believe
in it. Social position – ambition – seem made up too. Games for folks to – forget their troubles
with. Bess says I’m crazy, that I live in a dream world.”85 Nonnie also is happy to discover that
she is pregnant by Tracy because she’ll “have something they…can’t take away” from her.86 But
while Nonnie is glad, Tracy begins to see her differently than he has before, thinking “Nonnie
was only a name and an obstacle. A colored girl blocking a white path.”87
Smith portrays Tracy as not treating Nonnie particularly well. He has a “way of taking[her] as for granted as you’d take a piece of cornbread.”88 He frequently tells Nonnie that he will
see her and then does not show, acknowledges he always talks about himself and never her life,
and on at least one occasion is physically violent with her. At that time, Tracy, who admittedly isdrunk, also berates her for her race: “Think you can act like a white girl, huh? Well, won’t letyou. Been playing that trick on me all my life, haven’t you?”89 He also tries to marry Nonnie off(without asking her) to his servant/friend-since-childhood Henry as a “solution” to his problems.
At times he seems to be blaming her for his attraction and the societal consequences of theirrelationship:
He could not keep his eyes off of her. Bewitched at the girl’s beauty and poise.
Bewitched. And angered. You’d think God wanted to play a fine joke and had made83

Ibid., 7.
Ibid., 94.
85
Ibid., 95.
86
Ibid., 6.
87
Ibid., 97.
88
Ibid., 93.
89
Ibid., 197.
84

30
Nonnie. Here, He said, is a woman any man would love and be proud of. She haseverything you could desire. But you can’t have her. No. You can have sips and tastes,
but you can’t have her. And you’ll be ashamed and sneak around and feel nasty…That’s
the price you have to pay – for the sips. 90
Smith’s portrayal of Tracy seems to be in line with what white men of the 1920s might bethinking and acting, but she does not seem to be praising him in any way. Her portrayal of him is
one of understanding, but not quite sympathy. The effects of segregation and racism have left
him damaged, despite his white skin.
Smith’s portrayal of Nonnie is quite complicated. She is a sympathetic character, to be
sure, but Smith seems to feel that Bess is right. After Nonnie reveals her pregnancy, she says,“You’re such a fool! How could you be such a fool? Going to college and everything! You’dthink you were some little country nigger…who’d never had a chance – You know no white man– you know, Nonnie, no white man loves a - …Even if he loved you and respected you what
good’d it do, with you colored!”91 Bess cannot understand why Nonnie wants to keep the baby,
and their brother Ed cannot comprehend why she will not go back to Washington with him. Even
Tracy questions Nonnie: “Here’s Nonnie, college-educated, smooth as any Atlanta debutante
could hope to be, making most Maxwell girls seem mighty small-town. Yet when it comes to athing like this [her pregnancy], she doesn’t seem to mind any more than a turpentine nigger
gal.”92 Smith shows Nonnie to be something of an enigma, as seen in Bess’ thoughts about her
sister:To think about her at any time was not easy. Your thoughts slid off like oil on glass.
There was nothing to catch hold to. You felt Non had done all her growing inside, all her
living there, sending out no faults or virtues like most folks whose growth has reached
out toward their world; no little mannerisms of voice or body. Just a slender tall girl withskin the color of a rich eggshell, with features that made folks say, “She’s beautiful” –somebody who talked softly, smiled, turned away if you came too near. She was like a
90

Ibid., 148.
Smith, 123.
92
Ibid., 148.
91

31
quiet vague tune to which each person sets his own words. And you were never sure yourwords were the right ones.93
In Bess’ opinion, the main problem with Nonnie is “that Nonnie has never in her life admitted toherself that she is Negro.”94 While Nonnie is aware of her race as she has experienced the effectsof racism (particularly sexually), Nonnie is slightly out of step with the rest of Maxwell. She
appears to be much less aware of the consequences of living as a black woman in a white society
than any of the other black characters in the novel. Smith’s black characters are very aware of
their position in society and of the dangers that accompany it. Additionally, many of them,
particularly Bess, are unhappy with the way black people are treated. Nonnie appears to be fairly
oblivious to the realities of the world she lives in. This explains why those who love Nonnie
frequently express anger toward her. Bess perhaps does so the most: “It was as if she had shutout this world she’d been born into, insulating herself by soft denials of it. If she said it didn’t
exist, it didn’t exist. It was this invulnerableness which angered Bess, this giving the lie to herfears.”95 When Ed finds out about Nonnie and Tracy, he thinks, “A decent educated Negro – herown kind – wasn’t good enough for her! No! No! She had to have a white man, a damned nocount white –”96 Her inability to acknowledge society’s unspoken racial strictures is a problem.
As Tracy remarks, “Nonnie didn’t keep the rules – or maybe even know them.”97 ThoughNonnie does not understand society’s rules about race, Tracy does, and that is where the problem
arises.

93

Ibid., 285.
Ibid., 293.
95
Ibid., 35.
96
Ibid., 230.
97
Ibid., 43.
94

32

CHAPTER SIX
VIEWS OF MISCEGENATION
Views on miscegenation, both similar and different, are present in all three novels. Theseviews are generally expressed through the white characters and reveal what people of the time
were thinking about interracial sex. The following sections bring together these beliefs.

A Son of Carolina
In A Son of Carolina, Mrs. Levering sends the Bible revealing Gypta’s true parentage toBarron, who upon reading it is filled with a “dull, stupefied agony.”98 He is profoundly affected
to discover that the woman he loves is the daughter of a slave: “A sudden sense of immeasurable
loss fell upon him, for in one second he realized that the woman whom he loved as he had neverbefore loved any human creature, was as dead to him as if she were a tenant of the catacombs ofRome – dead yet living.”99 Gypta is “[i]nnocent and yet crucified for the sins of her people.”100
Perhaps most shocking to Barron is the fact that her father was his father’s friend. He lays mostof the blame for the situation on Ashley Prescott, whom he cannot punish because he is longdead:Cursed be the name of Prescott…Worse than the sin of Cain blackens your soul! Cursed,
I say, be they who leave the trail of their sensuality, to wind its endless length throughgenerations yet unborn. The hand of Cain, scarlet and reeking with the life-blood of his
brother, is a glorious picture in comparison with this dragon of lust! One throws its victim
in the silence of the grave, the other is endless...I cannot gaze in the sightless sockets ofthe dead man under the tomb and brand him. I cannot put a bullet in the heart that is but alump of defiled clay! I cannot take arms against a handful of mouldered bones! Ah! his98

Stovall., 217.
Ibid.
100
Ibid., 218.
99

33
dust defies me! He is dead, while the trail of the serpent stains and blasts the life of abeautiful innocent thing, and coils about her, an irrevocable, inevitable destiny, making
her an alien and nameless; and yet I cannot avenge her.101
Gypta also holds her father accountable. She asks Barron, “Tell me plainly if I am to suffer
because of the sins of a man whom I’ve no memory of even seeing. I who am spotless as a babe,
must I be the victim of his licentious powers and insatiate lust?”102 Gypta pleads with her love toignore her heritage, arguing that he is better than this and that she will have nothing if he rejects
her. Unfortunately for Gypta, Barron is bound by societal norms, despite his love for her. He
gives a lengthy explanation for why he cannot marry her, since “the curse of [his] people has
wreaked an awful vengeance on [those] who are innocent”:103
My poor girl, if you could all but understand all as I do, you would not censure me so. Do
you know that my marriage to you would be the prelude to the disgrace of a name thathas given honor and lustre to the proudest State in the Union? A man has no right toviolate a sacred trust or to dishonor the heritage bequeathed to him by succeeding
generations…Selfish motives should not tempt him to disloyalty. Gypta, I am the last of
my family, the last of my name. Now, would it not be the basest dishonor to blacken, as it
were, the escutcheon of my fathers’ that they have preserved untarnished for more than acentury? I, the only representative of that name, by a mesalliance [sic] would perpetrateit, but to bring infamy and disgrace before my people. Such an act would cause me tobecome an alien and a branded social outcast.104
Needless to say, Gypta does not take this explanation well. She points out the ridiculousness of
his argument, commenting that “[T]his little drop of dark blood would have caused thoseancestors to rise in their mouldering shrouds and pursue you and leer at you, and point at you
with their fleshless fingers, and say, ‘Cursed be he who have blackened the name of the
Baxters!’”105 She wonders whether his commitment to family heritage will outweigh the shameand guilt he will feel for abandoning her, and she points out the irony of his concern for the pride

101

Ibid., 218-9.
Ibid., 231.
103
Ibid., 235.
104
Ibid., 235-6.
105
Ibid., 237.
102

34
of Southern society while she represents the “blot that ineffaceably stains with dishonor yourgrand beautiful Commonwealth.”106 By rejecting her, Barron has missed the opportunity to “inpart [atone] for the sins of [his] people.”107 Ultimately, he is deaf to her pleas since “there is one
thing among the people of the South that is stronger than life itself – that is the social instinct ofracial purity.”108 As the conversation continues, Gypta eventually resigns herself to the fact that
she cannot marry a white man and regrets her selfishness in trying to do so. She leaves Barron
with these words: “Thank God, you at least are saved from the curse, and I’ve not dragged you
into the meshes of my black destiny.”109
Gypta leaves her home and adopted parents forever to go learn more about the South andthe members of her new race, though she continues to pass as white. Taken ill, she ends up
staying with an elderly colonel and his wife. She asks many questions about race, only forgiven
due to her Northern extraction. When she asks if mulattoes who have just a small amount of
black blood might be able to rise above their racial heritage, Colonel Bailey answers with anemphatic no: “The smallest taint of the negro blood brands on them the curse of amalgamation
which is the violation of God’s law.”110 Skin color or intellect do not matter. This profoundly
affects Gypta, who later bursts into tears over her condition, despairing: “She was not only
homeless, but she was a violation of God’s law. To belong to a people who toiled in the field andfurrow as their birthright…was terrible, but to bear the brand of the curse was omnipresent andirrevocable.”111

106

Ibid., 238-9.
Ibid., 238.
108
Ibid., 241.
109
Ibid., 252.
110
Ibid., 297.
111
Ibid., 299.
107

35
The comments characters make reveal several things about miscegenation. White (andespecially Southern) blood was something to be proud of, and any compromise to that blood
purity was a source of shame. Barron sees Prescott’s actions as a betrayal to his race, but death
has allowed him to escape repercussions. Meanwhile, Barron must sacrifice love to uphold his
family’s honor, the most important thing of all. Additionally, mixed heritage is not somethingthat can be forgotten or abandoned, even if no one is aware of it. Only three people besides
herself know of Gypta’s racial background, but Gypta cuts herself off from society because to dootherwise would be breaking society’s rules. Being a mulatta is not something Gypta can everescape, and if she had lived longer, it would have remained an eternal source of shame

White-BloodIn White-Blood, Renfroe, one of the white employees of the ranch, tries to warn Wharton
off from Lissa the first time he sees them together.112 Wharton’s friend Jim Northrup berates him
when he finds out about Lissa: “The last thing a man forgets is he’s white. If that don’t carry an
obligation to preserve his race he ought to have his heart cut out…A man is expected toremember some things. The inheritance of blood first.”113 Northrup, who has seen Lissa,
understands Wharton’s attraction to her, particularly in a setting devoid of any white women, but
he knows that Wharton needs to put his race ahead of sexual pleasure. The lawyer Kearns places
the blame for miscegenation squarely at the feet of white men: “The danger was graver than that.
It was the loss of responsibility of the white man for the future of his race by toleration of therelationship between the races in which the morals of the negro women were utterly

112
113

Majette, 20.
Ibid., 102.

36
disregarded.”114 He also takes exception to the hypocrisy of white supremacists who have mixedrace children, telling Renfroe, “I hate like hell to hear white Americans with mulatto kids yellingthemselves hoarse over white supremacy.”115 Kearns does not support race-mixing, but he hates
whites who are hypocritical about it even more. Ria, who by the end of the novel works withblack women as a Red Cross volunteer, is indignant at the way they are treated by white men:“Thirteen and fourteen-year-old little brown or black mothers, nursing at their scarcely formed
breasts mulatto babies, evincing no shame at this, rather a sense of superiority; but not divulging
the father’s name who never assisted in the support of these babies. To Ria’s indignant question
as to why the mothers permitted this neglect, the answer was the fathers never helped. It was notexpected. They had no legal recourse. To publish his name would endanger their lives.”116
Majette also implies that the later enacting of racist legislation, including the institutionof a white political primary, is a response to white fears that blacks are gaining power, in part
because there are so many who have white blood:[H]ordes of mulatto children filled urban and rural districts. And the features of thechildren were seldom of the sodden and lethargic features of the ‘pore white trash,’whom the negroes have always considered as a class beneath them. But, the alert, often
aggressive faces of these half-breed children showed characteristics of the most virile anddominant Anglo-Saxon strain. So it was that at last the proud possessors of America’spurest strain of blood began to fear this new race that their unchecked desires werecreating. Negro dominance became the swooping vulture that spread its hideous
threatening black wings over the entire South.117
Kearns and Ria discuss racial mixing later in the book as something that could possibly bring
down the South. Kearns says, “But the rising tide of yellow is spreading imperceptibly –dangerously. We of the South may let down the dikes that will destroy us.”118 As Kearns objects

114

Ibid., 233.
Ibid., 238.
116
Ibid., 298.
117
Ibid., 232.
118
Ibid., 248.
115

37both to miscegenation and to blatant, but not all, discrimination against blacks, it is hard to tellexactly what he thinks of the South’s impending destruction. However, it is clear he believes thatmen who simultaneously oppress and impregnate blacks will be responsible for it.
In this novel, the dominant emotions surrounding miscegenation are fear and betrayal.
Interracial sex is seen as something of an epidemic that could potentially destroy white Southernsociety. It is not something simply to be ashamed of, but also something inherently dangerous.
White men, through their uncontrollable lust, have created a monster that cannot easily becontained.

Strange Fruit
Characters explicitly express opinions about miscegenation in Strange Fruit lessfrequently than in the other two novels. However, though the spoken beliefs of characters in
Strange Fruit are significantly less drastic, they still indicate a society that completely
disapproves. Preacher Dunwoodie expresses this directly. He says to Tracy, “Now there’s
another sin. Lots of men, when they’re young sneak off to Colored Town. Let their passions run
clean away with them. Get to lusting – burning up! And they get to thinking…they’d rather havethat kind of thing than marriage. A lot rather! Scared of white girls. Scared nice white girls can’tsatisfy them. And they’re right! Of course no decent fine white woman can satisfy you when you
let your mind out like you let out a team of wild mules racing straight to –”119 Not much else issaid explicitly by whites except for Tracy (as described earlier), but Tracy’s absolute fear ofpeople finding out about Nonnie shows how much Maxwell would disapprove of an interracial
relationship. This intense fear drives Tracy to obtain money from his mother under false

119

Smith, 87.

38pretenses and pay Henry to marry Nonnie to keep other white people, particularly his family,
fiancée, and church from finding out.
One person who has an interesting reaction to Tracy and Nonnie is Tracy’s sister Laura.
After Tracy’s death, she assumes that Nonnie was the one who killed him. She does not seem tobe angry with Nonnie, however, just curious. In fact, she believes that their relationship musthave been one of love, and that Tracy “must have done something very dreadful” to bring
Nonnie to kill him.120 When Nonnie brings over flowers from her employer, Laura silently
thinks, “What did he do that gave you the courage? Nobody loved him much, except you, but
you must have loved him. You have to love a thing – you have to love someone a great deal tokill her, don’t you? You have to love and hate what you kill, a great deal, don’t you –”121 Laura’s
reaction is unusual, as few people would have thought an interracial affair would have been oneof love. While Southern society acknowledged interracial sex as usual, if deviant, interracial love
was inconceivable to many Southern whites.

120
121

Ibid., 321.
Ibid., 322.

39

CHAPTER SEVENHISTORICAL AND LITERARY ANALYSISInterracial love was not inconceivable to the authors of these books, but none of themsaw it as viable in Southern society. They wrote characters who transgressed racial rules and who
were the descendants of people who transgressed the same rules; these characters cannot ever befully accepted by either the black or white communities. Their involvement with white men
brought hardship. This does not change as the half-century progresses.
Stovall’s stance on miscegenation and Gypta herself is not readily clear. Gypta is theprotagonist of A Son of Carolina, and she is written as a heroine, if a tragic one. The reader is
supposed to sympathize with Gypta, whom Stovall portrays as a woman whose life is destroyedby factors beyond her control. Stovall writes her as a romantic – she is not excited to marry
Emon Hamlin because she does not love him, though she will do it out of a sense of duty to herparents, and when she meets Barron after he saves her life, she immediately falls head overheels. Stovall also writes Gypta as a tortured character. She is distraught over her Africanancestry and believes that it must separate her from white society. It also causes a permanent riftwith the parents who raised and loved her. In the end of the book, however, she is heroic,determined to save her love from less reputable members of her race. She dies in his arms,
proclaiming her love for him. Barron, on the other hand, is comforted in his grief by looking up
at the Baxter family vault and knowing that he had not tarnished the name through interracial
marriage.

40
The fact that Gypta and Barron cannot be together because of their different racial
heritage is treated as simply a fact of the world. Gypta’s willingness to give up Barron is part of
the heroic nature of her character. As she lies dying, she tells Barron that she does not blame himfor putting his race before his love for her: “Barron, love cannot condemn. I do not blame you forbeing true to – your blood and your people.”122 Neither Gypta nor Barron is blamed for thedemise of the relationship, and Stovall does not portray their relationship as shocking. Neither is
Gypta’s relationship with Hamlin or any other man. The revelation of Gypta’s racial background
does not end Barron’s love for her. If anyone is blamed, it is Ashley Prescott, Gypta’s biologicalfather. Barron is shocked at Prescott’s behavior and wishes he could be punished for goingagainst the natural laws of society. We never learn the details of the relationship between
Prescott and Nanny, so the reader does not know how it came about or if Nanny consented tosexual activity. Importantly, none of the book’s characters blame Nanny for producing a childwith her master. Though Mrs. Levering first wants to fire Nanny when she learns she has anillegitimate child, after she calms down and hears Nanny’s story, she no longer holds it against
her.
Stovall codes Gypta as black in several ways. Her name is reminiscent of Gypsy, marking
her as an other in the mind of the reader. At several points in the book Stovall describes her as
having darker features (though she is just as frequently, if not more so, described as pale).
Stovall portrays Gypta as somewhat exotic, and most definitely striking, particularly to men. The
reader, who has been in on the secret since the beginning, understands that this is due to her
racial difference, though the characters within the novel are unaware. Gypta is a viable romanticinterest, as long as the secret of her heritage does not come to light, but one must wonder if

122

Stovall, 365.

41
readers would have accepted a novel with a successful romance between Gypta and Barron. The
Baileys and Barron himself speak of the reality of Southern society, both in the book and in real
life: an interracial marriage would never have been acceptable.
We do not know Stovall’s personal views on race. In fact, little is known about her life atall. She was born in Columbia, South Carolina to a college professor in 1865 and married
Colonel Thomas P. Stovall of Atlanta, a former Confederate officer, though her husband died
only a few years later. Stovall continued to reside in Georgia for many years after being
widowed and was still living in Atlanta when she published A Son of Carolina in 1909. She
eventually moved to Washington, D. C., where she died in 1917. Stovall authored articles for avariety of publications. It is probable that Stovall leaned toward the progressive side, as the few
articles I have been able to find include a discussion of the temperance movement in Georgia andan article published in The American Jewess, a Jewish women’s magazine. However, this is only
speculation, and there is not enough evidence for me to feel comfortable making any claim about
her beliefs, and I have found no evidence about her racial views. A Son of Carolina seems to be
the only book she published. This also appears to have been the only printing of the book, and it
does not seem likely that many people read it. A review published in The Atlanta Constitution
describes the book as a “novel against miscegenation,” writing, “It deals with one of the greatsocial problems of the day in a frank and candid, yet courteous, and engaging manner, andappeals to the unbiased judgement of the thoughtful reader.”123 Whatever Stovall’s views, W. L.
Scuggs, the author of the review, is certainly against miscegenation given that he opens with aquote from himself that includes some highly racist language on the subject. Clearly someone

W. L. Scruggs, “Novel Against Miscegenation Reviewed by Col. W. L. Scruggs,” The Atlanta Constitution,
December 6, 1909.
123

42
could enjoy the book, even if they had racist tendencies. It does not particularly upset the racial
order of the 1910s.
We know significantly more about Majette’s views on race, though much is still amystery. Leslie Dunlap, the only scholar to have written about Majette, has described her as “areformer and novelist…who believed in white supremacy but exposed racial injustice, with one
foot in the UDC [United Daughters of the Confederacy] and the other in emerging interracial
reform networks.”124 Majette was born and raised in South Georgia, where her doctor father hadtreated patients in logging and turpentine camps, and Majette lived in a turpentine camp after her
marriage to its owner. She therefore knew the truly horrific conditions blacks faced in theseindustries. Majette also participated in anti-lynching movements with the Women’s ChristianTemperance Union and worked as a probation and child welfare office and as a lawyer who tookon black clients. Majette struggled in both her writing and her daily life to “reconcile hercommitment to democratic ideals and personal expression with her commitment to segregationand sexual propriety.”125 These struggles can be seen in White-Blood.
White-Blood, published by a company that specialized in “Racial Contributions,” was notwidely read by any means and only had one printing. Reviews of the book, when they happened,
were mixed. The most prominent newspaper to review the novel appears to have been The
Washington Post, which objected strongly to the subject matter.126 The Wayne County Progressof Jesup, Georgia – where Majette was living at the time – was surprisingly positive, urging
readers, “Don’t jump to conclusions. Read the book.”127 A review that appeared in multiple

Dunlap, “Majette,” 41.
Ibid.
126
“Negro Race Situations Well Cited,” The Washington Post, January 25, 1925.
127
A. T. Ingram, “A Review,” Wayne County Progress, September 17, 1924. Vara A. Majette Papers, Hargrett RareBook and Manuscript Library, Box 1, Folder 8.
124
125

43
papers, however, concluded, “Mrs. Majette must be given every credit for her courage andboldness, whatever may be said of the book itself. As a novel, as art, the book was
ungrammatical, melodramatic, and didactic; but it is a voice at a time when people are silent. We
presume that book review pages and editorials will prefer to ignore the thesis. It is
unpleasant.”128 Ignored the book was – it only had one printing and was largely forgotten,
although one school district in Alabama rejected its use as “its circulation at this time, to anylarge extent in this section would not be in the interest of better race relations.”129 However, thenovel was not ignored entirely. The NAACP sold White-Blood in its store, but its review in The
Crisis was mixed, describing it as “crudely written but [having] a certain strength,” particularly
with the drawing of certain black characters.130 However, the reviewer concludes, “The author
believes that the South must give the Negro justice or perish – but she believes that there is sucha thing as segregated justice. She fears the mulatto whom she believes will mix with foreign
whites and someday give much trouble in the South.”131
Perhaps the part of Majette’s history most relevant to this paper is a 1906 editorial written
after the race riot in Atlanta. Though Majette’s views may have changed in the intervening
eighteen years before her novel’s publication, this editorial’s themes can clearly be connected to
the novel.132 Here, Majette gives her views on the causes of the violence, allegations of black
men raping white women. In addition to dismissing these fears as exaggerated and denouncing

128

Vara A. Majette Papers, Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Box 1, Folder 8.
J. S. Lambert to The Stratford Publishing Company, January 24, 1925. Vara A. Majette Papers, Hargrett RareBook and Manuscript Library, Box 1, Folder 3.
130
Robert W. Bagnall, “The Browsing Reader” The Crisis, March 1925. Vara A. Majette Papers, Hargrett RareBook and Manuscript Library, Box 1, Folder 8.
131
Ibid.
132
There is evidence of Majette’s views on interracial sex evolving over the years. In 1969, her great-granddaughter
told her she was dating a black activist, and that they had been organizing service workers at the University of North
Carolina, Chapel Hill. Majette supported her great-granddaughter in her decision to protest her sorority’s policy thatwould not allow her boyfriend to come to dinner. See Dunlap, “Majette,” 56.
129

44
any white women who might make false accusations – Majette was not a fan of the simpering
Southern belle, a fact that can be seen in White-Blood through the character of Louise – shemakes the bold declaration: “Look at the hordes of mulatto children swarming in the cities, thetowns and even the country and say how far is the white man responsible for conditions. If hestooped to the black man’s woman, what then when the black man dares to lift lustful eyes to thewhite man’s woman?”133 The editorial certainly contains significant racist themes (for example,
explaining that if lynching is effective – which she does not believe it is – it should be utilized),but Majette refuses to place the blame solely on black men: she considers the rape of white
women by black men and white men having sex with black women to be equal in perpetuating“the degradation of our Southern blood.”134 Majette held complicated views of race: like many
progressives she spoke out against common racial assumptions and violence while still holding
significantly racist views herself. Ultimately, though, she saw white men as betraying their white
heritage by engaging in sexual relations with black women.
Unlike Gypta, Lissa is not the main character of White-Blood. The book is not Lissa’s
story, evidenced by the fact that she almost completely drops out of the narrative halfway
through, appearing only once in the second part of the novel. The reader does not learn what
happened to her after the events in Meskeegee, other than the fact that she gave birth to
Wharton’s son. After her late-night visit to Wharton, we do not see her again. She does notreceive a literary journey; that belongs to the white Ria Wharton. Lissa is more of a catalyst for
the events that drive the plot, though Majette would probably argue that Wharton was thecatalyst.

Vara A. Majette, “The White Man to Blame,” Atlanta Georgian, September 1, 1906. Vara A. Majette Papers,
Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Box 1, Folder 8.
134
Ibid.
133

45
Lissa is aware of her situation in society, which she puts squarely on her mixed-heritage.
She expresses significant anger at the various white men who are her ancestors. Majette portrays
her as a woman who is definitely unhappy and does not explicitly put the blame on her for
defying society’s rules. Unlike Gypta, however, Lissa is not portrayed as an innocent. Her sexual
relationship with Wharton is consensual, and in fact, Majette uses racially-charged sexual
stereotypes to describe Lissa. She is exotic in appearance due to her mixed ancestry, part of aninteresting point of comparison between the characters: Lissa and Nonnie are exotic andattractive because of their whiteness, while Gypta is exotic and attractive because of her
blackness. One would not generally read Lissa as a sympathetic character, but Majette gives hersome nuance, particularly through her disgust of her own nature and the length she went to toprotect whites, allowing readers to not dismiss her immediately. It should also be noted that inboth A Son of Carolina and White-Blood, the women go out of their ways to protect white menfrom violence perpetuated by black men, feats in which they are successful. Black men are still
portrayed as dangerous, and white men as in need of protection. (Though Majette feels that
Wharton brought it on himself, while Stovall’s work portrays Barron as innocent.)
Strange Fruit offers a different character than either of the other two novels. Nonnie is acollege graduate who could have a career if she went to a city. Therefore, a huge part of her
tragedy is tied to her connection to Tracy. She stays in Maxwell, working as a servant, becauseof him. Rather than living an independent life that few black women at the time had access to,
she will be raising a child as an unmarried mother and grieving a man whom she cannot openly
love.135 In addition to losing her lover, she has also lost her brother, both since he cannot
possibly return to Maxwell after his crime and because it seems likely that there will now be a

The Andersons’ friend, Dr. Sam Perry, expresses a desire to marry Nonnie, though at the end of the book he has
not yet approached her, and it is unclear how she would respond to his proposal.
135

46
significant rift between brother and sister. Nonnie is tragic in another sense: her love for Tracy
blinds her from some of the ways in which he treats her less than well. The reader, who hasaccess to Tracy’s mind, also sees the ways in which he thinks about her. Though she is not awareof it, the reader knows that Tracy, despite loving Nonnie, also resents her, blaming her for the
guilt and torment he feels.
Smith’s characters, both black and white, are significantly more nuanced than those of
Stovall and Majette. This is likely due to her superior writing ability, but also due to her different
views of race (discussed below). Regarding Strange Fruit, Smith denied that she intended towrite a book about race, insisting that it was about human relationships. However, since it was
set in the South, the characters did have to deal with the implications of segregation.136 The
effects of racism permeate the novel, and Smith was particularly interested in the psychologicaleffects of segregation.137 Whatever, Smith may have stated or believed, this is most certainly abook that is inherently about race, and readers interpreted it that way when it was published.
A Son of Carolina is in many ways the safest novel of the three. Gypta is not aware of herancestry, and though she initially hopes to change Barron’s mind, she eventually acquiesces tothe fact they cannot be together. Though she continues to pass as white, she does not allow
herself to sully a white bloodline with her blackness. Stovall portrays miscegenation as
inherently wrong. Though Gypta is innocent in the matter, she is tortured by an identity crisisand forced to break off ties with her lover and her parents. Barron still loves Gypta even after theshocking revelation, but he never wavers in his resolve that to marry her would taint his noble
family name. Even as Gypta dies in front of him, Barron does not regret casting her aside.

136

Anne C. Loveland, Lillian Smith: A Southerner Confronting the South (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press, 1986), 63.
137
Ibid., 64.

47
Furthermore, blacks in the novel fall squarely into two stereotypical categories. Stovall
portrays most as loyal servants to whites, some even regretting the end of slavery. These
characters are presented in sharp contrast to the other category, that of the “scary” blacks. These
include the man who was lynched for murdering a white child and the mob that attacks Magnolia
Hall. Stovall writes them as inherently dangerous and guilty. There is no commentary of thelynching of the alleged murderer other than how it makes Gypta feel – in fact the scene is only
two pages long, perhaps emphasizing its commonplace nature or deemphasizing the violence ofit. The characters know the man to be guilty of a heinous crime, and the reader does not get toquestion their judgment. The black mob’s actions are extremely violent: they burn down aplantation house and intend to kill a white man. Their last crime is only prevented because one of
the loyal black servants informs Gypta of the plan. The mob is shown as ignorant, if not
downright stupid. Their goal is to take control of Barron’s land and use it for themselves, but dothey really think that they can get away with burning down a mansion and killing a white man,particularly since another black had just been lynched? Their violence is further cemented by thefact that they kill Gypta, who, despite her black blood, is still a light-skinned proper lady and theprotagonist of the story. Other than Gypta, Stovall’s black characters do not chart any new
ground. Even Nanny, a sympathetic character who speaks in proper English when all the
dialogue of other black characters is written in dialect, is loyal to Mrs. Levering and has fondmemories of her time in slavery and of her master’s family. The only whites that step out ofsocietal rules are Ashley Prescott, who would not have been censured during slavery for
fathering a child with his slave, and the Leverings, whose pretense that a black child is white canbe put down to their Northern ignorance and who are punished with the loss of their beloved
daughter.

48
White-Blood, on the other hand, pushes boundaries while upholding limited white
supremacy. Wharton is most definitely transgressing against the rules of southern society,particularly in the fact that he has feelings, not just lust, for a woman not of his race. Though heis by no means the only white man at the time to have sexual relations with a black woman,
Majette still portrays him as a traitor to his white blood. Majette does not write black charactersas cookie cutter stereotypes, but the novel would not win any awards for sympathetic, nuanced
black characters. She clearly shows that lynch mobs are not always right, as an innocent black
man is killed on the word of an ignorant white woman who is so terrified of black men that she
cannot function. However, Majette shows the consequences of the act as affecting whites, notblacks, as the chapters surrounding the event are from the perspective of Ria and Kearns.
Wharton is ultimately destroyed by his affair with Lissa, not something that generally happened
to white men at the time (or any time really) but is used to drive home Majette’s points. Majetteshows intense political racism as causing black violence. She recognizes their anger and feels it
justified, but her characters still exhibit paternalism when talking about African Americans anddo not support full racial equality. The aforementioned review in the NAACP’s The Crisis calledout Majette for believing in “segregated justice” and “fearing the mulatto.”138 Whether this truly
reflects Majette’s beliefs can be debated, but it does show the problems inherent in the work.
Ultimately, though, in White-Blood it is the white men who are responsible for everything, eventhe acts perpetrated by others. Their betrayal of their blood leaves an opening for destruction.
In contrast to the other two, Strange Fruit was dangerous and controversial from themoment it was published, not pulling any punches when discussing life in the small-town South.
This is not surprising given Smith’s biography. She was a lifelong supporter of racial equality,

138

Bagnall.

49
openly denouncing segregation. She had been born in Florida, but later moved to Georgia. In her
early life, she taught music for several years in China, which, along with other trips abroad, may
possibly have contributed to her more progressive racial views.139 For many years, she ran theLaurel Falls Camp for Girls. Smith was outspoken about race and frequently denounced whiteliberals. She began to be vocal about racial inequality in 1936, immediately ruffling feathers.
Smith believed that segregation was a deeply engrained cultural/spiritual problem that affected
whites, making whites the true problem, not people of color. She also held that the problems ofracism would not be solved by simply providing food or suffrage – whites had to learn how to
see blacks as human. Strange Fruit was her first published novel, but it had taken three years forthe book to be accepted by a publisher due to its controversial content.140 The novel includes
provocative topics such as discussions of abortion among the white middle class, veiledreferences to lesbianism, and critique of the hypocrisy of Southern Christians. However, Smith’s
strongest commentary pertains to race, of which most of the voluminous evidence cannot
unfortunately be presented here due to space. Lynching is clearly shown as despicable. While
Henry is not the most likeable character, the reader (and most of the characters, as the whole
town knew Tracy and Henry were quite close to each other) knows that he had absolutely
nothing to do with Tracy’s death. Significantly, Smith also shows several whites working
together to try to stop the lynching by hiding Henry. They are ultimately unsuccessful but are
profoundly affected by their failure and the horror of an innocent man’s death. Tom Harris, whotook the lead in hiding Henry and rushed to the scene of the crime, though arriving too late, when
he learns that the lynch mob found Henry, offers one of the most profound lines in the novel.

John C. Inscoe, “Lillian Smith (1887-1966): Humanist” in Georgia Women: Their Lives and Times Volume II ed.
Kathleen Clark and Ann Short Chirhart (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014), 170.
140
Ibid.
139

50
Wondering to his son what it feels like to be a lyncher, he realizes that “[e]very Southernerknows…We lynch the Negro’s soul every day of our lives.”141 Lines such as these make Smith’s
agenda quite clear.
Strange Fruit received both positive and negative reviews. Many reviewers praised thenovel and anticipated it having a significant impact. Debates occurred on its literary value andwhether Smith had done an accurate job of portraying her black characters.142 African American
reviewers had mixed feelings on the novel, with significant persons such as W. E. B. DuBois
praising it. Others thought Smith’s portrayals of blacks were inaccurate and that white readers
would judge African Americans based on the characters in the book.143 Southern reviews,
however, were generally negative, as the novel was seen as being an attack on race relations. 144
Even in the North, the novel met with criticism, being banned in Boston for obscenity, a movethat engendered with a significant amount of publicity. Despite the controversy surrounding thebook, it sold very well, going through seven printings in just two months and ending up in thenumber one spot on the New York Times Book Review’s best-seller list.145
Smith wrote black characters in a way that might have rubbed many whites the wrong
way. The main black characters of Nonnie, Bess, and Ed are all college-educated, and Ed lives in
Washington and works for the government. This educational difference is seen in other black
characters as well. The Andersons’ friend Sam is a doctor who has returned to his hometown toserve his people, and Rev. Livingston is preparing to send his twin daughters to Spelman. The
other significant black characters, Henry and Dessie, are portrayed very differently. They are

141

Smith, 355.
Loveland, 68.
143
Ibid., 69.
144
Ibid., 70.
145
Ibid., 71.
142

51
more in line with what Southern whites would have been comfortable thinking about blacks, but
Smith still imbues them with nuance that keeps them from becoming one-dimensional
stereotypes. There is genuine friendship between Tracy and Henry, not simply the loyalty ofservant to a generous employer. Dessie is overwhelmed with guilt after Henry convinces her tohave sex with him (added to which the trauma of discovering Tracy’s body immediately after),certainly a contrast to the stereotype of promiscuous black women.
Most important, however, is Smith’s portrayal of miscegenation and interracial love.
Tracy and Nonnie love each other and have done so for many years. Despite Tracy blaming
Nonnie for his inescapable situation, it is his own behavior that led to the relationship. Not only
would he have to be the initiator, it was his actions as a child that led to Nonnie’s near-worshipof him. It was a good thing, to be sure, that he protected her from assault by another white boy,but it was not an action white Southern society would have expected or encouraged. Most of thecommentary on miscegenation in the novel comes from Tracy himself. He knows that society
will look down on his relationship, but he continues with it anyway – and toys with the idea of
maintaining the affair after his marriage to the white Dottie. In fact, it is Tracy who makes thesituation worse by trying to “fix” it. Ed overhears Henry boasting of how Tracy has paid him tomarry Nonnie, which drives him to shoot Tracy to death. Unlike Wharton in White-Blood, we aresupposed to feel sorry for Tracy, but we are not necessarily supposed to like him. He is damagedby racism like Nonnie is, though in different ways. This is perhaps the most subversive elementof Strange Fruit: racism and segregation damage whites as well as blacks.
Neither A Son of Carolina nor White-Blood had a large audience or were remembered forany length of time, though this is surely due to mediocre writing and melodramatic storytellingrather than any commentary being offered on race. Strange Fruit is still read today, though it has

52
nowhere near the reach it did in 1944. With only three books included in this study, it is
impossible to definitively discern any large trends in the racial viewpoints of white Southern
women. However, placed together, the novels do offer an interesting suggestion of a changing
narrative surrounding race and gender that warrants further study. The three books containsignificant differences, which could be put down to time period, the personal views of theauthors, or simply plot necessity. It is therefore the similarities that are more revealing. Both
Stovall and Majette hold white men responsible for miscegenation in their novels. In thesebooks, Wharton and Prescott are (somewhat) scorned, while Lissa, Gypta, and Nanny are
portrayed as objects of pity. They cannot be fully happy because they are caught between two
races. These books do not support interracial sex or marriage. In fact, they are arguments against
it. Personal and societal problems would not have occurred if powerful white men had stuck towomen of their own race. The authors imply that Lissa and Gypta would not have experienced
such torment if they were fully black. They portray miscegenation as the cause of these women’s
pain. The books uphold white superiority, while simultaneously switching the narrative of
miscegenation from the black seductress to the white male blood-traitor.
Strange Fruit is different from the other two in that it is not trying in any way to maintainwhite supremacy, but it certainly fits into the narrative of the other books included in this paper.
The matter of who to “blame” is complicated. Nonnie’s siblings do place some of the blame on
her – though for being stupid, not for initiating the affair. Their frustration and anger with her isbased on her failure to understand the consequences of her actions, which put their family indanger. However, Ed certainly blames Tracy as well, so much so that he murders him.
Nevertheless, as a whole, Smith portrays Nonnie as an innocent who does not fully understandthe ways of Southern society. Tracy does and chooses to break the rules anyway. While Tracy

53
says that he blames Nonnie for his situation, he is really trying to cover up intense anger at
himself. He knows that he has broken the unspoken and spoken rules of racial and sexual
propriety, and he cannot seem to bring himself to stop. Other white characters believe that theonus for these kind of sexual encounters is on the men. Preacher Dunwoodie, while decrying
white men having sex with black women, puts the men in the position of active initiators. There
are multiple references throughout the text to the regular sexual harassment black womenexperience at the hands of white men. While a couple of characters (Tom Harris and Laura)
believe Nonnie killed Tracy, neither describe her as a seductress or anything of the kind andbelieve that he must have given her a reason to take his life. It seems to be an unspoken
understanding that young white men go to the black side of town of their own volition. Smith’s
portrayal of Tracy’s culpability differs from that of Ashley Prescott or Steve Wharton. Smith
sees Tracy as a victim of Southern racism, though in a much different way from her black
characters, as his psyche is inherently damaged by the society he lives in. Additionally, Strange
Fruit is not so much an argument against miscegenation like the other two books are, but rather
commentary on the state of Southern racism.
The three books also showcase developments on views of race in general. In A Son ofCarolina, Stovall portrays blackness as something inherently biological that Gypta cannot
escape, no matter her upbringing, current behavior, or the fact that, as the daughter of a white
man and a woman described as an octoroon, she has more white ancestry than black. Roy
Levering is afraid of this eventuality when he and his wife choose to adopt Gypta in the firstplace and is ultimately proven right. Despite her initial attempts to convince him otherwise,
Gypta knows that she cannot marry Barron because her blackness is inescapable and that it
would be wrong to continue to press her case. When Colonel Bailey tells Gypta that mulattos

54
cannot rise above their ancestry under any circumstances, it sends her spiraling because it is a
final confirmation of something she knows to be true and is unable to question. In White-Blood,
Majette portrays blackness as something that is still a biological truth but that has also been
influenced by white culture’s restrictions. Lissa sees herself as something unnatural, created bywhite man. As in A Son of Carolina, a white man having sex with a black woman is considered abetrayal of race, but the action feels different, more of a contravention of society’s laws thannature’s. Lissa believes that specific traits are tied to race, such as whiteness being associatedwith standing up for oneself, but the text itself reveals that not to necessarily be the case. For
example, Majette portrays extremely racist legislation as a problem because it will not be
accepted by African Americans, leading to violence. That being said, Majette and her charactersstill see blacks as lesser than whites on an inherent level. For Smith in Strange Fruit race issomething that has been constructed by the greater society. Her characters, both white and black,are varied and do not necessarily fit into precise racial molds. Nonnie expresses her belief thatrace is not “real.” Despite race not being something inherent, Smith still shows that it ties people
to specific paths in life. Bess tells Nonnie that she cannot ever be with Tracy, and it is true – but
because it will not be allowed by society and because Tracy is influenced by that society’s
racism, as opposed to the biologically determined reasoning of A Son of Carolina. This
discussion is an example of how literature can offer additional insights that other sources fromthe time might neglect. As legal decisions continued to rely upon the idea of a biological divisionof races, evidence for the shift in views on race must be looked for elsewhere – in novels, forexample.
Stovall, Majette, and Smith’s works highlight changing views of race in the transition
period of the first half of the twentieth century. During this period, we also see the white55
supremacy being further chipped away in each of these novels. A Son of Carolina presents a
sympathetic portrayal of a woman who did not know she was transgressing racial boundaries, but
it does nothing to challenge the order of things. White-Blood begins to call out injustices in theSouth and begins to change the narrative of guilt as it pertains to interracial sex, but it does not
portray blacks as being the equal of whites. Strange Fruit goes much further than the other two,clearly calling out the hypocrisy and cruelty of Southern society. All three books, however, cometogether to hold white men initially responsible for racial issues and personal tragedy. Thoughviolence is still committed by black men and though white characters do not support racialequality, the catalysts for unrest are the white men who engage in miscegenation. Gypta, Lissa,
and Nonnie cannot find happiness both because they are the offspring of white men and because
they are romantically involved with white men. The implication is that these women would havebeen able to avoid the tragedies they experience if white men had remembered their place andnot transgressed by sullying their white blood. White supremacy is shown as, at times, having agendered aspect. Both white men and women wanted to uphold the purity of white bloodlines,
but they went about it in different ways: women saw it as the responsibility of all, while men saw
it as the responsibility of everyone except themselves.

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