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Spirited Youth or Fiends Incarnate: The Samarcand Arson Case and Female Adolescence in the American South
- Journal of Women's History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 9, Number 4, Winter 1998
- pp. 152-180
- 10.1353/jowh.2010.0210
- Article
- Additional Information
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.