Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Fall/105i/Section 026/Edith Rance Harris

 Edith Rance Harris 

 Biography 

Edith Rance Harris was a public school teacher from Raleigh, North Carolina, who recounted her childhood and coming of age during the 1920s and 1930s, at a time of violent Ku Klux Klan terrorism. Her family immigrated from Jamaica in the early 1920s, and her father established a dentistry office in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Harris’s family was threatened by the local K.K.K., who she felt were threatened by her father’s middle class earnings as a Black man. At the height of the K.K.K. violence, her family home is burned down and she is held at knifepoint by a K.K.K. member. Her childhood held a dual nature of extreme racial violence and starkly normal experiences of playing tennis at school. She had nine siblings, two of whom died when she was young. Harris’s mother passed away from cancer, which led her father to alcoholism. He passed shortly after. Her siblings found their adulthoods in different states of which she’s unsure, and she ended up teaching at a small school in North Carolina, where she met her husband, who was also a teacher. She discusses her challenges navigating the sexual expectations of Black women while feeling personally interested in polyamorous relationships and a multitude of sexual experiences. Her explanations for her processing and path forward out of such trauma offers compelling insights to her perseverance and character. Edith Rance Harris’s life narrative encapsulates the stunning social issues of Black womanhood in the 1930’s U.S. South.

 Social Issues 

Brutal and Blatant Acts of White Supremacist Violence

The Ku Klux Klan arose in three reactionary waves throughout its history of terror in the United States. The K.K.K. was founded in Tennessee at the end of the Civil War, by a group of white men determined to counter Reconstruction efforts.

The second wave of the K.K.K. arose in response to fears of immigration and Communism. Britannica states, “A burning cross became the symbol of the new organization, and white-robed Klansmen participated in marches, parades, and nighttime cross burnings all over the country.” (Britannica, 2).

The third wave of the K.K.K. arose in response to the civil rights movement and Supreme Court rulings of the 1960s. Throughout the political rises and falls of the Ku Klux Klan, Black communities were terrorized with shameless acts of violence.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, “From Arkansas to Georgia, thousands of black people were killed. Similar campaigns of lynchings, tar-and-featherings, rapes and other violent attacks on those challenging white supremacy became a hallmark of the Klan.” (SPLC, 2020).

Although particularly vulgar, the naming of such violent acts name the particular terror that was experienced in our country’s history.

K.K.K. and Law Enforcement

The first wave of the Ku Klux Klan ceased violent activity once Jim Crow laws strengthened white supremacy across the country. The second wave of the Ku Klux Klan was revived around 1915, reacting to fears of immigration and Communism. There was little done to stop such blatant violent activity, as many law enforcement members themselves actively supported the cause. According to Britannica, “There were numerous instances of bombings, whippings, and shootings in Southern communities, carried out in secret but apparently the work of Klansmen.” (Britannica, 2020).

The K.K.K. in both ideology and practice wielded an immense amount of unchecked power, particularly in the Southern counties they terrorized. According to Mcveigh and Cunningham, “Particularly important, in this regard, is the way in which Klansmen asserted a belief in the right of citizens to take the law into their own hands when law enforcement officials are deemed unwilling or unable to bring "justice" to those who are seen as deserving of punishment. In doing so, they were drawing upon a tradition of vigilante justice practiced in the South - a tradition that included the use of lynching as a means of intimidating and maintaining dominance over blacks (McMillen 1990; Tolnay and Beck 1995; Messner, Bailer and Zevenbergen 2005).” (Mcveigh and Cunningham, 848)

 Black Womanhood  Black Women’s Sexualities

Black Women’s Sexualities

The culture of respectability dominated sexual realities for young Black people, and particularly young Black women, in the 1930s. Although often engaging in the same sexual practices appropriate to the development of other young adults, young Black women were held to an alternative and stricter set of standards. Young Black women were constrained by the expectations of extraordinary “goodness” in order to prove themselves equivalent to their white peers. Young Black women were also held to misogynistic standards of purity and unable to explicitly participate in sexual activities without harming their reputations. Young Black women specifically in the South were also often held to Christian expectations of abstinence and innocence. The overlapping societal views constrained the freedom of many young Black women of the time, which explains historical records of internal dissonance regarding societal morality and experiential practice.

According to Simmons, “Although the female students learned about the importance of purity as children, many of them experienced moments where they deliberately ‘laid aside all morals’ and chose to pursue pleasure. Some of the women did so knowing they were going against standards of respectability and morality.” (Simmons, 449) Black Women and Generational Relationality

Black Women and Generational Relationality

The individual experience of Black women in the 1930s was not an isolated one; both academic studies and historical narratives cite interconnected nature of generational trauma from ancestor to descendant, mother to child. Many Black women hold intense trauma from extremist racial violence and societal abuse, as they re-experience and co-experience what their previous lineage has also felt. As Simmons states, ““Importantly, this experience of connection, independence, and interdependence does not proceed through a linear timetable of psychological and social development from interdependent to independent. Instead, Black women’s notions of relationality move in circular/overlapping time.” (Simmons, 324) The interwoven nature of Black womanhood offers insight into how Black woman have experienced material oppression, and also how they have pioneered radical, cycle-breaking healing. Citations:

 Citations: 

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Ku Klux Klan." Encyclopedia Britannica, May 10, 2021. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ku-Klux-Klan

“Ku Klux Klan.” Southern Poverty Law Center. Accessed May 27, 2021. https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/ku-klux-klan. McVeigh, Rory, and Cunningham, David. "Enduring Consequences of Right-Wing Extremism: Klan Mobilization and Homicides in Southern Counties." Social Forces 90, no. 3 (2012): 843-62. Accessed May 23, 2021. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41682680.

Simmons, LaKisha Michelle. “Black Feminist Theories of Motherhood and Generation: Histories of Black Infant and Child Loss in the United States.” Journal of Women in Culture and Society 2021 46:2, 311-335. Accessed May 27, 2021. https://www-journals-uchicago-edu.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/doi/full/10.1086/710805#_i2

Simmons, LaKisha Michelle. “To Lay Aside All Morals’: Respectability, Sexuality and Black College Students in the United States in the 1930s.” Gender & History, no. 24 (2012): 431-455. Accessed December 11, 2020. https://doi-org.libproxy.lib.unc.edu/10.1111/j.1468-0424.2012.01690.x