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"Who Was Your Grandfather on Your Mother's Side?" Seduction, Race, and Gender in 1932 Virginia
Nicolas, Taylor
Nicolas, Taylor
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Abstract
Was Dorothy Short Black? And, more importantly, did she
know it? These questions, odd-sounding and perhaps unsettling to the
contemporary reader, were the ones raised by Leonard Harry Wood in
the hopes of avoiding prison for the crime of seduction. This Article
examines the story of Dorothy Short and Leonard Wood, their
relationship, and the criminal case that followed it in order to explore
the ways in which seduction laws worked to create ( and recreate)
gendered categories of race. The Article's main contribution is
shedding new light on the 1932 Virginia Supreme Court case Wood v.
Commonwealth of Virginia, and more broadly on the ways in which
seduction jurisprudence influenced racialized understandings of
gender.