In 1974, Joan Little was charged with first-degree murder after stabbing a prison guard who sexually assaulted her. Her case exposed conditions many women prisoners must confront.
It was 60 years ago when this Black woman was raped and strung up on a tree. There are many who believe that incidents such as these belong to an era of racist terror now forever buried under the historical progress of the intervening years. But history itself allows only the naive to honestly claim these last 60 years as a time of unequivocal progress––especially when the elimination of racism and male supremacy is used as the yardstick.
When the autopsy report was released, it contained this evidence of recent sexual activity on the part of Alligood: Joan Little was being detained in a jail in which she was the only woman—among prisoners and guards alike. In fact, the reality of Joan Little’s life as a prisoner, even before the rape, might have been one of sexual exploitation—a fate she consistently resisted. Jerry Paul has said, “One possibility is that she was being kept in Beaufort County Jail for openly sexual purposes.”
But she had the courage to fend off her assailant. The price of her resistance was a new threat of death, this time issuing from the government of North Carolina. And so she is being tried by the same state whose Supreme Court decided, in the 19th century, that no white man could be convicted of fornication with a slave woman.
She is being tried by the same state whose Supreme Court decided, in the 19th century, that no white man could be convicted of fornication with a slave woman. After the difficulty in locating Alligood’s pants, the defense attempted to have all the evidence assembled and placed in protective custody. This was denied.
Thus when a white man rapes a Black woman, the underlying meaning of this crime remains inaccessible if one is blind to the historical dimensions of the act. Although the immediate victim of rape was the Black woman––and it was she who endured its pain and anguish––rape served not only to further her oppression but also as a means of terrorizing the entire Black community. It placed brutal emphasis on the fact that Black slaves were indeed the property of the white master.
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