W. J. Cash, in his seminal exploration of Southern culture, The Mind of the South, wrote that while “the actual danger of the Southern white woman’s being violated by the Negro has always been comparatively small . . . much less, for instance, than the chance that she would be struck by lightning,” it was “the most natural thing in the world for the South to see it as very great, to believe in it, fully and in all honesty, as a menace requiring the most desperate measures if it was to be held off.” In Cash’s estimation, the Southern rape complex “had nothing immediately to do with sex,” but
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