He upended the core white conviction that any sex act between a black man and a white woman could only be rape. In fact, he wrote—and this was the primal fear that gnawed at white men—some white women lusted for or even loved black men. Manly exposed white men as hypocrites for demanding sex with women of a race they considered servile, stupid, and inferior. And he taunted whites with their own weakness and carelessness, warning them that they, not blacks, would ultimately pay the price for race mixing.
