![]() ![]() The challenges of poverty and the demand for domestic work also created many households where women were the main breadwinners. Such a choice could offer her social legitimacy. A Black woman might, for instance, live with a man and identify herself by his last name although they were not legally married. Such sexual freedom was also linked to nonmainstream interpretations of marriage and the gender roles assumed in such a union. However, they also raised panic among law enforcement and white residents who feared that such sexual freedom would damage the morality of the cities they inhabited. These popular practices of intimacy were opportunities for people otherwise limited by racism and poverty to assert autonomy. Hartman writes, “A small rented room was a laboratory for trying to live free in a world where freedom was thwarted, elusive, deferred, anticipated rather than actualized” (59). As opposed to the expectation of formal, long-term, monogamous, and heterosexual relationships, Black people at the turn of the century were increasingly engaged in casual sex with multiple lovers of varying genders. ![]()
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May 2023
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