Date of Award
Fall 2021
Document Type
Thesis
Terms of Use
© 2021 Susannah Broun. This work is freely available courtesy of the author. It may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license. For all other uses, please contact the copyright holder.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Degree Name
Bachelor of Arts
Department
History Department
Abstract
This paper explores the complex desegregation process of movie theatres in the southern United States. Building off of historiography that investigates regulations of postwar teenage sexuality and recent scholarly work that acknowledges the link between sexuality and civil rights, I argue that movie theatres had a uniquely delayed desegregation process due to perceived sexual intrigue of the dark, private theatre space. Through analysis of drive-in and hardtop theatres, censorship of on-screen content, and youth involvement in desegregation, I contend that anxieties of interracial intimacy and unsupervised teenage sexuality produced this especially prolonged integration process.
Recommended Citation
Broun, Susannah , '22, "Panic at the Picture Show: Southern Movie Theatre Culture and the Struggle to Desegregate" (2021). Senior Theses, Projects, and Awards. 624.
https://works.swarthmore.edu/theses/624