The Terrible Power Of White Women Fears In Donald Trump’s Campaign
The fear of and for white women, a fear fueling Donald Trump’s campaign, is killing people.
In September 1906, a young white woman named Annie Morgan in Columbus, Ohio dropped dead of a heart attack after a dream in which a Black man stood over her bed with a knife. Although the Black man was fictional, a racist fantasy concocted of newspaper headlines and flawed common knowledge, The Atlanta Constitution published an account of her death under the headline “NEGRO, SEEN IN DREAM, CAUSES DEATH OF GIRL.” On September 22, two weeks later, after more headlines calling up the image of Black men assaulting the bodies of White women, the building tension exploded into deliberate and directed violence that left up to 30 Black people dead and hundreds more injured.
Annie Morgan had learned her fear from her culture, in which political candidates vied for possession of fear, in which fear was commodified and weaponized. It wasn’t new, this fear. It had been built into the concept of race, created to uphold white supremacy, and buttressed regularly by those who needed it to maintain their power. In her untimely death, Annie Morgan became a tool that could be used to create more fear.
