After Wilmington, the political argument against black voting quickly became a social one that tapped into generations of mythmaking. If black men could hold political office, they would give jobs to men who could vote for them. White women who wanted to become teachers had no votes to offer, so they would have to find some other way of persuading black school superintendents to hire them. Pundits turned their arguments about political corruption into fears of sexual predation, and then white mobs turned that equation into the age-old idea that black men were rapists.
