The sexual basis of racial formation: Anti-vice activism and the creation of the twentieth-century 'color line'

White slavery narratives - stories about white women forced into prostitution - played an important role in the construction of racial distinctions in the early twentieth century. New York City politicians launched a well-publicized anti-vice crusade in 1910 that led to the imprisonment of a mixed-race woman named Belle Moore. In this article, I analyse this event to show the importance of sexuality and gender for creating racial boundaries. Testimony in People vs. Belle Moore designated certain intimacies as violating the color line, thereby clarifying what it meant to be 'white' or 'colored'. I argue that theories of racial formation must include a more careful consideration of gender and sexuality because the ongoing maintenance of racial categories depends upon cultural narratives about sexual deviance and purity.This research was made possible by a 1998 Dissertation Grant from the Rockefeller Archive Center and a 2000/01 Sexuality Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council. The author wishes to thank Wendy Griswold, Orville Lee, Joane Nagel, members of the Northwestern University Culture and Society Workshop, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Nicola Beisel deserves special thanks for commenting on several drafts of this article