Unmanly Wife Beater to Big Negro, Who Delights to Fight His Wife: Newspapers, Race, and Intimate Partner Violence in the South, 1865-1900

After the Civil War, gender became more fluid, which enabled women to hold abusive partners accountable for their actions. Testimony in court records from the 1870s to 1880s and articles in newspapers demonstrated a shift in what had previously been accepted as a male privilege of chastisement. Op-eds condemned men for abusing their female partners and justified a woman’s right to be free from violence, with some citing a feminist reading of the biblical story of Adam’s rib. The discussion in public forums, such as newspapers, generated support for prosecution of abusive husbands by utilizing the rhetoric of civilized men versus savages. Men who beat their wives were labeled “brutes,” “inhuman fiends,” and—very pointedly—“unmanly.” Black women, however, met with additional structural inequalities, especially closer to the 1890s when the public began linking the brutality of abusive men to race. From New Orleans, Louisiana, to Charlotte, North Carolina, newspaper articles started discussing wife beating as the black community’s problem, and intimate partner violence became racialized. Newspapers described an African-American man who abused his wife as a “bad nigger” and “a blood thirsty negro.” Successful prosecutions were made more often against black men during this period, and punishing intimate partner violence became a method of white elite control over African Americans. Throughout the late 1800s, print culture helped to shape views on gender, race, and intimate partner violence ultimately leading to the decline of public support for combatting the problem of intimate partner violence for the better part of the next century.