Abstract
This paper examines the connections between media’s representations of “missing” white and Black women during the antebellum period and the twenty-first century in America, particularly concerning “missing white woman syndrome.” During the earlier period, discourses in both Black and white communities concerning emancipation spurred “bound” women of all statuses to flee their households. The white husbands and slaveholders these women fled published advertisements in local newspapers to make the public aware of white women’s “elopements” and enslaved Black women’s “absconding.” Incorporating evidence from both institutional and self-made archives/databases of advertisements in missing women, this study demonstrates that notices of missing women in the antebellum period have direct linkages to the modern phenomena of “missing white woman syndrome.” Through an analysis of missing female ads placed in newspapers in Pennsylvania and Texas from 1835 to 1865, it argues that the differing statuses of white and Black women during this historic period sets a racialized and gendered historical precedent for contemporary media’s “over coverage” of white women and girls who go missing, compared to their Black counterparts. This past behavior was foundational to the “politics of disposability” that negatively influences Black women, especially those considered “missing.” The study of missing women through history indicates the continuous need for racialized and gendered analytical lens on the connections between contemporary phenomena and the past, as well as a need for closer attention paid to coverage of missing women, especially contemporary non-white women.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
African-American, Black-History, Women's-history, Gender, Black-Women
