White Women, Rape, and the Power of Race in Virginia, 1900-1960For decades, historians have primarily analyzed charges of black on white rape in the South through accounts of lynching or manifestly unfair trial proceedings, suggesting that white southerners invariably responded with extralegal violence and sham trials when white women accused black men of assault. Lisa Lindquist Dorr challenges this view with a careful study of legal records, newspapers, and clemency files from early twentieth century Virginia.