272 pages / 6.00 x 9.00 inches / no illustrations
History / United States - Southern History | Sociology & Social Science | Women's Studies
In the fall of 1994 Susan Smith, a young mother from Union, South Carolina, reported that an African American male carjacker had kidnapped her two children. The news sparked a multi-state investigation and evoked nationwide sympathy. Nine days later, she confessed to drowning the boys in a nearby lake, and that sympathy quickly turned to outrage. Smith became the topic of thousands of articles, news segments, and media broadcasts—overshadowing the coverage of midterm elections and the O. J. Simpson trial. The notoriety of her case was more than tabloid fare, however; her story tapped into a cultural debate about gender and politics at a crucial moment in American history.
Keira V. Williams is lecturer in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy, and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. 2015 Dibner Library Residential Scholar at the Smithsonian Institution and 2015 Fellow at the Institute for Inclusive Excellence at Texas Tech University, she is also the author of Gendered Politics in the Modern South: The Susan Smith Case and the Rise of a New Sexism.
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