... well-researched ... not a belief likely to surprise those literate in African-American history, but [Dailey's] argument that fear of Black sexuality and miscegenation has been the driving force behind structural racism and white supremacy is confident and persuasive ... Strangely missing from Dailey’s book is any consideration of white women’s complicity in racialized anxiety and violence against Black people. Though she devotes attention to Emmett Till, she has little to say about Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman who set Till’s murder in motion by falsely accusing him of assault. Surely white women contributed to what Baldwin called white Americans’ 'infantile, furtive sexuality' and played a significant role in reinforcing, upholding and exploiting this country’s racial apartheid.

This book makes a compelling argument that white America’s fear of interracial procreation was a driving concern in the creation and maintenance of segregation throughout the Jim Crow era; a thought-provoking read.

A noted historian of race in America, Dailey grounds this book with a clear narrative voice as she reviews the legal cases that institutionalized segregation in the American South ... Dailey shows how inflammatory narratives of sexual predation underpinned these assaults on Black lives, while also revealing how white women were then held to notions of racial 'purity.' An illuminating contribution to the history of racism in America, White Fright reveals how white anxieties around gender and sexuality shaped the Black experience of social injustice.

... illuminating ... a complex study. It is anchored in a careful review of the history of the broad civil rights movements and the role interracial intimacies played—both actual and fantasied ... The author carefully reviews much of the legal issues in which the social intimacies between the races played out, including Reconstruction-era Constitutional Amendments through numerous critical states and federal (i.e., Supreme Court) decisions. Her consideration of 'blood purity' requirements is a reminder of just how crazy racial politics can get ... White Fright’s strength and weakness is that it the narrative is intimately linked to the evolving civil rights movement during the century following the Civil War. Its focus on post-Civil War era does a disservice to the place of interracial relations that mark the two-and-a-half centuries the preceded the War Between the States. Perhaps Dailey should offer a follow-up study on this history ... offers a unique and, sadly, often overlooked glimpse into the history of Southern racism and the civil rights movement. It is a story Dailey tells thoughtfully and from which we can all learn, for it’s the American story.

Though general readers may occasionally lose their way in the thickets of legal maneuvering, students of the civil rights movement and constitutional law will find plenty of useful information ... A methodical journey through significant legal questions involving racism in America.