Revolt Against Chivalry: Jessie Daniel Ames and the Women's Campaign Against Lynching

by Jacquelyn Dowd Hall

This newly updated edition connects the past with the present, using the Clarence Thomas hearings -and their characterization by Thomas as a "high-tech lynching"- to examine the links between white supremacy and the sexual abuse of black women, and the difficulty of forging an antiracist movement against sexual violence.

Revolt Against Chivalry is the account of how Jesse Daniel Ames and the antilynching campaign she led fused the causes of social feminism and racial justice in the South during the 1920s and 1930s.

The book traces Ames's political path from suffragism to militant antiracism and provides a detailed description of the Association of Southern Women for the Prevention of Lynching, which served through the 1930s as the chief expression of antilynching sentiment in the white South.

Revolt Against Chivalry is also a biography of Ames it shows how Ames connected women's opposition to violence with their search for influence and self-definition, thereby leading a revolt against chivalry which was part of both sexual and racial emancipation.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Historical, Feminism, Race

305 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1979

About the author

Jacquelyn Hall’s research interests include U.S. women’s history, southern history, working-class history, oral history, and cultural/intellectual history. She served as president of the Organization of American Historians in 2003–2004 and of the Southern Historical Association in 2001–2002. She was also the founding president of the Labor and Working Class History Association. She was awarded a National Humanities Medal in 1999 for her efforts to deepen the nation’s understanding of and engagement with the humanities. In 1997, she received a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship and UNC’s Distinguished Teaching Award for graduate teaching. In addition to her teaching and research, she served as the founding director of the Southern Oral History Program from 1973 to 2011.

Her most recent publication is "The Good Fight," in Mothers and Strangers: Essays on Motherhood from the New South, edited by Samia Serageldin and Lee Smith (UNC Press, 2019). Her next book, Sisters and Rebels: A Struggle of the Soul of America, is forthcoming from W. W. Norton in May 2019.

Reviews

[Stacey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Over thirty years after its publication, this book remains an essential work of southern women's history. I cannot recall if I first read it as an advanced undergraduate or an early graduate student, but re-reading it this week reminded me of the significant contribution it made to the field. Hall's weaving of biography, social history and political history is masterful and her comepelling prose far too rare in historical writing. I thoroughly enjoyed redisovering this work.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, easy-to-digest book for anyone interested in community activism during the early 20th century. Not only does it address anti-lynching efforts by women, but it offers insight into how race, class, and gender affected (and continues to affect) interracial activism.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book traces lynching from the late nineteenth century through the 1930s (and brings in a comparison with the Anita Hill hearings in the more recent edition). This book is part biography (Jesse Daniel Ames) part movement history.

[Gina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author mentions at the start the difficulty of treating the topic, when so much relevant information is not well known. Therefore, there is a lot of information given that makes the focus feel less sharp.

The information it covers is important, especially looking at the conflicts between the ideal and the practical, and how easy it is to not realize when more is possible when it conflicts with what you believe you know.

There aren't any real solutions to that, except that perhaps it is best to realize that constant correction is needed, and accept that from the start. Discouraging, perhaps, but perhaps less discouraging than being sure that you can get it right and being disappointed.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book about the anti-lynching campaign in America, although told from the perspective of a white Southern woman. More about the organization, and not as great as the one on Ida B. Wells, but still interesting.