Abstract/Summary

Historians have demonstrated that white men used sexual violence as a weapon of terror after the Civil War to re-establish and strengthen white supremacy. Freedwomen’s testimonies against this violence have also been analysed as a key site of resistance in which women crafted alternative narratives about race, gender, and freedom. Little attention has been paid to the roles freedmen played in these processes, however. This article examines two ways in which black men shaped understandings of sexual violence against black women in the Reconstruction period: as allies and as perpetrators. In doing so, this work adds critical nuance to understandings of sexual violence in the Reconstruction South.