In the election of 1876, suppression of black voters gained a new prong of attack: ideologies about gender roles. If white men won in former Confederate states like South Carolina, their ideologies of what a man’s role and a woman’s role ought to be would be reinforced as the ideal. Notions of masculinity and femininity for white Democrats were inextricable from white supremacy — and were key to their subsequent victory. If white men were the ultimate aggressors — or as they would call it, protectors — then white women were the ultimate victims. Through political cartoons and depictions of Columbia, of angels, and of America personified, white women dominated notions of purity and goodness.
White femininity, tied to virtue and piety as much as white masculinity was steeped in violence, was also a weapon to beat down black voters with. They were the standard against which black women were derogatorily compared, and their claims that black men had been aggressive against them always resulted in violence from their male protectors. Women of both races turned out in huge numbers in support of their chosen candidates (despite still lacking the right to vote) through clubs, canvassing, and attending rallies. White women acted out melodramatic scenes to play up their perception as a populace who must be protected at all costs.
Black people were therefore maligned as a threat against white men’s ability to protect white women — usually in highly sexualized language to paint black men as uncivilized aggressors and black women as demons of iniquity. Black women were the most passionate political participants despite having the least enfranchisement and least protection because as a particularly vulnerable group they had arguably the most at stake in the election. They were smeared by white voters as the antithesis to white femininity — and thus, the antithesis of good.
The goal of these ideologies of femininity and masculinity — and of these ideals being inseparable from whiteness — was to separate and subjugate, and determine once and for all what the roles of white men v. black men and white women v. black women were. The election of 1876 determined what the roles of women in politics absent the ability to vote were, and furthermore put white male dominance back on the political menu.
Gender ideology is once again at stake in the 2024 election. Hundreds of years of political precedent have established the presidency as a man’s job, and for the first time, a black woman has a good chance of winning it.
Donald Trump has built his campaign on the very same notions of white supremacy and masculinity that hallmarked the 1876 South Carolina gubernatorial race — anti-political correctness, whiteness as a virtue, and violence in the face of defeat. His political persona posits itself as the ideal of white masculinity, and his base feel empowered. Even his slogan — Make America Great Again — draws parallels to cries by white Democrats in 1876 to make politics white again. These parallels aren’t so much eerie as easily foreseeable: of course a culture where whiteness and masculinity are rewarded would see equal rights as a loss of advantage.
The threat that Kamala Harris poses to Trump is not just Democrat versus Republican. A Harris victory would redefine what a woman ‘can’ do — what a black woman can achieve. And rather than celebrate this as indicative of the American ideal that anyone can succeed, Trump’s followers will believe that her win is a threat to the white supremacy they have thrived under. A threat to white people, a threat to men — nevermind the forty-five other presidents and Harris’s own vice presidential nominee that prove white men are far from becoming a minority in politics.
Shirley Chisolm tried in 1972. Barack Obama elicited many of the same fears from white Republicans, all of which came to naught. What Democrats in South Carolina did in 1876 was re-assert white male dominance as the status quo, and thus as immutable — but Kamala Harris’s campaign has proven otherwise. Voter demographics are more important now than ever: college-educated white women are still a determining group, though now with equal enfranchisement to their male counterparts. Thus, race and gender are still practically inseparable in modern politics, and a Harris victory would assert that the place of a black woman in politics is in the White House.
This was a fantastic read, Clara! Really enjoyed hearing your analysis of gender on 1876. A