Mixed Race Studies

…This depiction of Alice [Jones Rhinelander] fell squarely into a white tradition of depicting mulatto women as sexually available, sexually victimized, and/or sexually predatory.  By the 1920s many white Americans, particularly northern whites, joined African Americans in blaming southern white men for the existence of the substantial mulatto population that now (supposedly) threatened the racial purity of white America both by its very presence and by the behaviour—particularly the sexual behavior—of its members.  Indeed, northern white writers continued to be fascinated with the supposed rituals of white-male-controlled interracial sex in the South, particularly exclusive “octoroon balls” at which light-skinned African American women competed to be the mistress of socially elite white men who would support them financially in return for sex and companionship, all in the name of romance.  Such depictions, however, painted the women as desperately competing for their shared goal: a rich white lover.  By the 1920 images of mulatto women focused even more directly on their supposed obsession with “landing,” either as a wife or a mistress, a rich white benefactor—and on using that liaison to appropriate white money, property, and even power…

Lewis, Earl and Heidi Adrizzone. Love on Trial: An American Scandal in Black and White.  New York: W. W. Norton. 2002. Pages 166-167.