Spirited Youth or Fiends Incarnate: The Samarcand Arson Case and Female Adolescence in the American South

This article examines the 1931 arson trial of sixteen inmates of the North Carolina reformatory for delinquent girls. The sensational trial triggered a public debate on the meaning of "sexual delinquency" in working-class white girls. While the reaction to the case typifies a century-long pattern of ambivalence about female adolescent sexuality in the United States, it can best be understood in the context of the class and racial politics of a modernizing South. Concern about the sexual behavior of poor working girls in the New South formed part of a larger effort to fortify the existing social order of the region. Although white North Carolinians remained uncertain as to whether the defendants were salvageable "good girls" or degenerate "low-class" women, the state responded with harsh treatment that revealed an abiding distrust of poor, sexually active adolescent girls.