White Fright

“This idea, that American white supremacy was built from white anxiety over purity—sexual and otherwise—forms the foundation of Dailey’s well-researched new book. It’s not a belief likely to surprise those literate in African-American history, but her argument that fear of Black sexuality and miscegenation has been the driving force behind structural racism and white supremacy is confident and persuasive”

“Students of the civil rights movement and constitutional law will find plenty of useful information…A methodical journey through significant legal questions involving racism in America.”

“Racism seems to be contagious, but seeing more books like White Fright in stores, on shelves, and in hands feels like a step towards a cure.”

“An illuminating contribution to the history of racism in America, White Fright reveals how white anxieties around gender and sexuality shaped the Black experience of social injustice.”

“In her original, nuanced historical investigation, Dailey adds a new dimension to the history of civil rights by focusing on the anxiety over Black sexuality and miscegenation and the quest for white ‘racial purity’.... Dailey’s richly told narrative provides a rewarding perspective on the battle for civil rights.”

"This indispensable narrative powerfully illuminates how anxieties about 'miscegenation' and interracial marriage shaped and sustained white supremacy for four centuries. Every American should read this book."

"In White Fright historian Jane Dailey skillfully untangles the purposefully snarled concepts of sex, marriage, and politics at the foundation of the White supremacist American political economy that followed Reconstruction. More than a century and a half later, such gut-level concepts underlie our current politics, making White Fright essential reading right now. As Dailey shows, the history of anti-Blackness is White history."

"To understand the true virulence of white supremacy in America, and to grasp just how hard won the fights against it have been, one must reckon with the extent to which racist laws and actions have always, in fact, been fueled by white obsessions about sex. Jane Dailey's latest, a most powerful recovery of this insidious history, must be read by all."

"Jane Dailey's peerless contribution is the revelation of how African Americans came to rebut not only the arch segregationists of the Deep South, but also the white moderates who dared to prescribe what Blacks "ought to want"-even after the Nazis copied the laws that such well-to-do whites helped keep in place. A must-read to understand how the right to choose whom to love and marry lost its centuries-old exclusivity."