In 1974, Joan Little was charged with first-degree homicide after stabbing a jail guard who sexually assaulted her. Her case uncovered situations many ladies prisoners should confront.
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RAPE, LYNCH NEGRO MOTHER
Columbus, Miss., Dec. 17:
Thursday per week in the past Cordella Stevenson was discovered early within the morning hanging to the limb of a tree, with none clothes, useless. … The physique was discovered about fifty yards north of the Cellular & Ohio R.R., and the hundreds and hundreds of passengers that got here out and in of this metropolis final Thursday morning had been horrified on the sight. She was hung there from the evening earlier than by a bloodthirsty mob who had gone to her house, snatched her from slumber, and dragged her by the streets with none resistance. They carried her to a far-off spot, did their dust, after which strung her up.
–– Chicago Defender, Dec. 18, 1915
Nobody––not even the lads within the mob had bothered to accuse Cordella Stevenson of committing a criminal offense. She was Black and that was purpose sufficient. She was Black and a lady, trapped in a society pervaded with myths of white superiority and male supremacy. She may very well be raped and murdered with absolute impunity.
The white mob merely claimed that a couple of months earlier Cordella Stevenson’s son had burned down a white man’s barn.
It was 60 years in the past when this Black girl was raped and strung up on a tree. There are various who imagine that incidents similar to these belong to an period of racist terror now endlessly buried beneath the historic progress of the intervening years. However historical past itself permits solely the naive to truthfully declare these final 60 years as a time of unequivocal progress––particularly when the elimination of racism and male supremacy is used because the yardstick.
Rape isn’t one-dimensional and homogeneous, however one characteristic that does stay fixed is the overt and flagrant therapy of girls, by rape, as property.
The circumstances surrounding this case deserve cautious consideration, for they elevate elementary questions in regards to the bringing of homicide costs towards her. Furthermore, they expose situations and conditions many ladies prisoners should confront, particularly within the small-town jails of this nation.
Twenty-year-old Joan Little, one of the vital current victims on this racist and sexist custom, is the cultural grandchild of Cordella Stevenson. She says that she resisted when she was sexually assaulted, however because of this she is at the moment being tried on costs of first-degree homicide. Within the occasion of a conviction, she is going to robotically get a demise sentence and might be positioned on North Carolina’s demise row––the results of a “authorized’ course of, however nonetheless too near the lynch legislation of the previous.
The story begins final Aug. 27, when a guard on the jail in Beaufort County, N.C., was discovered useless within the cell of a lacking prisoner. He had been stabbed 11 instances with an ice decide—the identical ice decide that he had saved in his personal desk drawer. The jailer, Clarence Alligood, was white. The lacking prisoner was Black, and the one girl in your complete jail. Due to a conviction on costs of breaking and coming into, larceny and receiving stolen property, Joan Little was serving a sentence of seven to 10 years and had already been saved within the Beaufort County jail for 3 months on the time of her disappearance.
When the post-mortem report was launched, it contained this proof of current sexual exercise on the a part of Alligood:
“His sneakers had been within the hall, his socks on his toes. He was in any other case bare from the waist down. … The left arm was beneath the physique and clutching his pants. … His proper hand contained an icepick. There was blood on the sheet, cell ground, hall. … Beneath his buttocks was a adorned, partially torn girl’s kerchief. On the ground was an evening robe and on the cell door was a brassiere and evening jacket. … Extending from his penis to his thigh pores and skin was a stream of what gave the impression to be seminal fluid. … The urethral fluid was loaded with spermatozoa.”
After per week of evading police––who performed their search with riot weapons and helicopters—Joan Little turned herself in, stating nothing publicly in regards to the case besides that she did what she needed to do in self-defense.
At her personal insistence, Jerry Paul, the lawyer she contacted, obtained assurances that she can be incarcerated within the girls’s jail in Raleigh—not within the jail the place the incident befell and the place she feared that she can be subjected to additional sexual assault and even perhaps that her life can be in peril.
Shortly thereafter, Joan Little was charged with homicide within the first diploma.
The circumstances surrounding this case deserve cautious consideration, for they elevate elementary questions in regards to the bringing of homicide costs towards her. Furthermore, they expose situations and conditions many ladies prisoners should confront, particularly within the small-town jails of this nation:
- Joan Little was being detained in a jail during which she was the one girl—amongst prisoners and guards alike.
- Like another prisoner, Sister Joan was being held beneath lock and key. Solely her jailer, Clarence Alligood, had entry to the important thing to her cell that evening. Due to this fact, how may he have been current there towards his will? Part of an escape try on the a part of Joan Little, because the authorities then charged?
- Alligood was apparently killed by stab wounds inflicted by the identical ice decide that he was identified to maintain in his desk. What was a jail guard doing with an ice decide within the first place? And for what professional function may he have taken it right into a prisoner’s cell?
- Alligood was found bare from the waist down. In line with Karen Galloway and Jerry Paul, Joan Little’s attorneys, the authorities maintained for a full three weeks that Alligood’s pants had been nowhere to be discovered. Had been they afraid that the general public would uncover that, though he had been stabbed within the legs, there have been no such holes in his pants? Had been they afraid individuals would due to this fact notice that Alligood had eliminated his pants earlier than the battle started? In any case, how may such essential proof be allowed to vanish?
In truth, the fact of Joan Little’s life as a prisoner, even earlier than the rape, may need been one among sexual exploitation—a destiny she constantly resisted. Jerry Paul has stated, “One chance is that she was being saved in Beaufort County Jail for brazenly sexual functions.”
She ought to have been moved to the ladies’s jail in Raleigh shortly after her authentic conviction, however she was by no means transferred. In line with Paul, a TV digital camera was targeted on her cell always, leaving her no privateness no matter even when she modified garments or took a bathe. When she used her sheets to dam the view, they had been taken from her. Joan Little’s legal professionals have stated that on one event a freeway patrolman visiting the jail on enterprise unrelated to mortgage got here into her cell and urinated on the ground.
Important to a transparent perspective on the Joan Little case is an analvsis of what may need occurred if the state of affairs had been reversed. What if Alligood had overpowered her? What if he had stabbed her with the ice decide—as he may need meant to do if she couldn’t in any other case be raped? What if the sexually violated physique of Joan Little had been found in that cell on the evening of Aug. 27?
There might be little hypothesis in regards to the flip occasions would have taken had Joan Little been killed by Alligood. A verdict of “justifiable murder” would have in all probability closed the books on such a case.
However she had the braveness to fend off her assailant. The worth of her resistance was a brand new risk of demise, this time issuing from the federal government of North Carolina. And so she is being tried by the identical state whose Supreme Courtroom determined, within the nineteenth century, that no white man may very well be convicted of fornication with a slave girl.
Joan Little stands accused by a court docket system that, proportionate to its inhabitants, has sentenced extra political activists to jail than another state within the nation. The variety of state jail items in North Carolina is staggering––greater than 5 instances higher than in California, probably the most populous state within the nation. In truth, North Carolina, together with Georgia, can declare extra prisoners per capita than another state, they usually embody, after all, an enormously disproportionate variety of Black women and men.
As this text is being written, there are 71 prisoners on demise row in North Carolina, making that state primary within the nation in condemning individuals to authorized demise. Within the occasion of a conviction, the state’s current sentencing coverage may make Sister Joan Little the third girl within the nation to be sentenced to demise for the reason that Supreme Courtroom dominated in 1972 that the demise penalty imposed on the discretion of judges and juries was merciless and weird punishment. North Carolina subsequently mandated {that a} conviction on a first-degree homicide cost robotically carried the demise penalty. This process was appealed to the Supreme Courtroom in late April. The opposite two girls presently on demise row are additionally in North Carolina––a Black and a Native American.
Joan Little’s attorneys relate quite a few potentialities of judicial bias towards her. In Beaufort County, for example, the place households are generations previous, nearly everybody is aware of everybody else. Residing within the space are quite a few Alligoods. Certainly one of these Alligoods sat on the grand jury that returned the indictment towards Joan Little.
She is being tried by the identical state whose Supreme Courtroom determined, within the nineteenth century, that no white man may very well be convicted of fornication with a slave girl.
With out exception, each pretrial movement filed, as of this writing, has been flatly denied. Regardless of inflammatory publicity about Joan Little––together with unfounded and malicious costs that she was a prostitute and regardless of the unconcealed public sympathy for Alligood, the courts have refused to grant a change of venue for the trial.
Though Joan Little is indigent, her movement to have the court docket assume the prices of knowledgeable witnesses has been denied. It was denied although the court docket doesn’t need to pay her attorneys’ charges, for the reason that legal professionals are donating their providers.
Efforts to achieve entry to the proof, within the type of discovery motions, have additionally been thwarted. The sheriff at first refused to launch an inventory of feminine prisoners beforehand incarcerated within the jail, resulting in a perception that the authorities feared the publicity of different sexual assaults by Alligood and his colleagues. Later, after the State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) had questioned 65 former prisoners, their names had been launched to Joan Little’s legal professionals, however even this SBI report acknowledged that a few of these inmates claimed Alligood and different jailers made sexual advances towards them.
After the problem in finding Alligood’s pants, the protection tried to have all of the proof assembled and positioned in protecting custody. This was denied.
Though Sister Joan appeared clearly eligible to be launched on bail, District Legal professional William Griffin employed each trick of his commerce to stop her launch. When the protection attorneys tried to publish bail, for example, Griffin, counting on a technicality, ordered the clerk to not settle for the bond.
Lastly, because of a nationwide outcry, she was launched in February on bail of $115,000; an quantity that’s itself clearly exorbitant.
Over the previous couple of years, widespread concern in regards to the rising incidence of sexual assaults on girls has crystallized right into a militant marketing campaign towards rape. Within the Joan Little case, in addition to in all different cases of sexual assault, it’s important to position the particular incident in its sociohistorical context. For rape isn’t one-dimensional and homogeneous, however one characteristic that does stay fixed is the overt and flagrant therapy of girls, by rape, as property. Explicit rape instances will then categorical completely different modes during which girls are dealt with as property.
Thus when a white man rapes a Black girl, the underlying that means of this crime stays inaccessible if one is blind to the historic dimensions of the act.
One should take into account, for instance, that slightly greater than 100 years in the past, there have been few Black girls who didn’t need to endure humiliating and violent sexual assaults as an integral characteristic of their day by day lives. Rape was the rule; immunity from rape the exception.
- On the one hand, the slave grasp made use of his tyrannical possession of slave correspondence with girls as chattel so as to violate their our bodies with impunity.
- Alternatively, rape itself was a vital weapon utilized by the white grasp to bolster the authority of his possession of Black girls.
Though the speedy sufferer of rape was the Black girl––and it was she who endured its ache and anguish––rape served not solely to additional her oppression but additionally as a method of terrorizing your complete Black group. It positioned brutal emphasis on the truth that Black slaves had been certainly the property of the white grasp.
At the side of the sexual exploitation of Black girls, the stereotypical picture of the Black girl branded her as a creature motivated by base, animal-like sexual instincts. It was due to this fact no sin to rape her. This bestial notion of the Black girl, by the way, performed and continues to play a major position in justifying the overexploitation of her labor—for such a lady would hardly be distinguishable from a beast of burden. Once more, she is brazenly outlined as property.
If rape was, in impact, institutionalized throughout slavery, primarily the identical institutionalized type of rape is current right now in such vestiges of slavery as home work. What number of Black girls working within the properties of white individuals haven’t needed to confront the “man of the home” as an precise or potential rapist?
A bit greater than 100 years in the past, there have been few Black girls who didn’t need to endure humiliating and violent sexual assaults as an integral characteristic of their day by day lives. Rape was the rule; immunity from rape the exception.
The rape of the Black girl and its ideological justification are integrally linked to the portrayal of the Black man as a bestial rapist of white girls––and, after all, the castration and lynching of Black males on the idea of such accusations. Battle towards the sexual abuse of Black girls has demanded on the similar time battle towards the merciless manipulation of sexual accusations towards Black males.
Black girls, due to this fact, have performed a vanguard position, not solely within the battle towards rape, but additionally within the motion to finish lynching.
For Black girls, rape perpetrated by white males, just like the social stereotype of Black males as rapists, have to be classed among the many brutal paraphernalia of racism.
Each time a marketing campaign is erected round a Black girl who has been raped by a white man, due to this fact, the content material of the marketing campaign have to be explicitly antiracist. And, as incorrect as it might be to fail to assault racism, it might be equally incorrect to make mild of the anti-sexist content material of the motion. Racism and male supremacy need to be projected of their dialectical unity. Within the case of the raped Black girl, they’re mutually reinforcing.
Joan Little’s assailant had in all probability been uncovered to all of the racist myths about Black girls and was conscious of the shortage of redress obtainable to victims of white rapists. Within the aftermath of the incident, in truth, vicious accusations had been hurled at Joan Little: She was known as a prostitute, and it was claimed that she engaged in sexual actions with jailers.
The oppression of girls is an important and integral part of a bigger community of oppression that claims as its foremost victims Black individuals, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asians, Indians and all poor and working-class individuals.
After all, the conviction fee for rape is the bottom of all violent crimes––whatever the sufferer’s ethnic group. Solely in these cases the place the accused rapist is Black and the alleged sufferer is white can an extended jail time period or demise penalty be anticipated.
From 1930 to 1967, 455 males had been executed because of rape convictions: 405 of them had been Black, 48 of them had been white and a pair of had been of different ethnic teams. Which means virtually 90 % of all rape executions throughout this era concerned Black males.
Courts have established the sample of both acquitting or not attempting the vast majority of white males who’re charged with rape. In New York, for example, in 1967, 30 % of all felony indictments resulted in convictions, however in solely 13 % of all rape indictments had been there convictions.
There have to be a purpose behind this social and judicial encouragement given to rape. This purpose, in flip, have to be associated to the social and political operate of male supremacy usually.
The oppression of girls is an important and integral part of a bigger community of oppression that claims as its foremost victims Black individuals, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Asians, Indians and all poor and working-class individuals. Simply as class exploitation, racism and imperialist subjugation of peoples overseas serve to nourish this bigger system and maintain it functioning, so male supremacy is likewise important to its easy operation. The bigger system, after all, is monopoly capitalism, and its total driving motive is revenue.
It’s within the pursuits of the ruling class to domesticate the archaic patriarchal domination of girls––based mostly on male possession of females as property––that flourished in the course of the feudal period. So long as girls are oppressed, huge advantages accrue to the ruling class. Feminine labor might be much more flagrantly exploited than male labor. (White girls’s median wages are even decrease than Black males’s, and, after all, girls of coloration obtain the bottom wages of all staff.) The social definition of girls as housewives supplies, as Alva Buxenbaum states, the simplest “rationale for failing to make housekeeping and little one care a social accountability.” A listing of examples may go on and on.
The social incentive given to rape is woven into the logic of the establishments of this society. It’s a particularly environment friendly technique of conserving girls in a state of worry of rape, or of the potential of it. It’s, as Susan Griffin wrote, “a type of mass terrorism.”
This, in flip, buttresses the final sense of powerlessness and passivity socially inflicted upon girls, thus rendering them extra simply exploitable. But, simply as working-class and poor white individuals who exhibit racist attitudes towards individuals of coloration are unconscious brokers of a better energy, so rapists (although they could be individually unaware of this are performing deeds that give sustenance to not them however to the prevailing system.
Joan Little may not solely have been the sufferer of a rape try by a white racist jailer; she has actually been raped and wronged many instances over by the exploitative and discriminatory establishments of this society. All individuals who see themselves as members of the prevailing group of battle for justice, equality and progress have a accountability to meet towards Joan Little.
These of us––men and women––who’re Black or individuals of coloration should perceive the connection between racism and sexism that’s so strikingly manifested in her case. These of us who’re white and girls should grasp the difficulty of male supremacy in relationship to the racism and sophistication bias that complicate and exacerbate it.
Allow us to make sure that the leitmotif operating by each side of the marketing campaign is unity. Our capability to attain unity might imply the distinction between life and demise for Sister Joan. Allow us to then forge amongst ourselves and our actions an indivisible energy, and with it allow us to halt after which crush the conspiracy towards Joan Little’s life.
Editor’s observe: After a five-week trial, a jury, made up of each Black and white individuals, deliberated for lower than 90 minutes earlier than acquitting Little—marking the first time a lady was acquitted of homicide on the grounds of self-defense towards sexual violence.
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