Rape as Racial Injustice

This chapter examines activists in the black freedom movement who politicized the connection between rape and racism in their fight for justice. These activists argued that rape law and the entire legal system served to uphold white supremacy. Black men almost exclusively faced the death penalty for interracial rape, and black women victims saw little to no justice in the aftermath of white male sexual violence against them. In response, activists launched local campaigns nationwide in defense of black women victims, demanding justice. Likewise, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund pursued the abolition of the death penalty in their defense of convicted black rapists. In calling attention to the injustices faced by black men, some lawyers and activists also engaged the trope of the lying white woman. This was one of the strategies employed in Maryland’s infamous Giles v. Johnson case. In defending both black victims and accused black assailants, lawyers and activists exposed the racial injustices embedded in rape laws and their application. However, activists’ formulation of rape as racist oppression failed to engage a politics of rape that included black female victims of intraracial rape. This ultimately limited the scope of the movement.

The Challenges of Antirape Activism in the 1970s

This chapter examines the conflicts and constraints posed by varying antirape discourses and approaches to antirape activism in the 1970s. At this time, activists in the women’s liberation and black freedom movements confronted one another’s politics on rape, sometimes unable to find common ground. The competing beliefs and approaches that activists brought to their antirape work heightened the potential for discord between movements. This was particularly exacerbated by the increasing role of the state in antirape work. By the mid-1970s, state actors and agencies played a dominating role in antirape work, leaving many feminists deeply concerned about the direction of the movement. State co-optation of key feminist interventions, such as rape crisis centers, resulted in a movement that was largely reformist. Feminists saw their once radical vision of social revolution overshadowed by increasing state efforts for reform-based solutions to the problem of sexual violence.

Rape Is a Political Crime against Women

This chapter introduces early 1970s feminist antirape theorizing and organizing. The feminist antirape movement emerged within the context of the larger women’s liberation movement, sometimes also referred to as second wave feminism. Feminist antirape activists critiqued the failings of the law, medicine, and society at large in responding to rape. Initially a mostly white group, feminist antirape activists pursued a variety of organizing strategies—from demonstrations and speak-outs to creating rape crisis centers and hotlines to support victims. Over the course of the decade the movement diversified and black feminists pushed the broader movement to incorporate an intersectional analysis into their antirape agenda. Feminists of all racial and ethnic backgrounds held particular contempt for the legal system which, from local police to the state courts, dramatically failed to meet the needs of rape victims. In law journals nationwide, feminist legal scholars exposed the inadequacies of rape law, argued that the legal system was totally ineffectual in stopping rape, and advocated for significant law reform.

Epilogue

The epilogue focuses on the evolution of antirape efforts in the 1980s and beyond. Black feminist analysis had an increasingly significant impact as the antirape movement diversified and activists appealed for an intersectional framework for justice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, women of color were at the forefront of antiviolence activism, insisting on an approach that ensured the safety of survivors without strengthening the oppressive carceral state.

Defining the Injustices of Rape in the Joan Little Rape-Murder Case

This chapter examines the case of Joan Little, a North Carolinian inmate who defended herself against sexual assault by her white jailer and was subsequently put on trial for murder in 1975. Little found avid support from the black freedom, women’s liberation, and prisoner’s rights movements, all of which employed varying frameworks to theorize Little’s plight. The confluence of multiple political agendas around this single case reveals the many ways that activists defined the injustices of rape. The dominant racial justice discourse focused on Little’s vulnerability as a black woman, attacked by both a white man and then a white supremacist legal system. From the prisoner’s rights perspective, the defining issue was Little’s status as an incarcerated woman. Her case revealed the violence and oppression of the legal system as a whole. Finally for feminists, Little epitomized the situation faced by all women, first victimized by men and then a male-dominated legal system that refused to grant her her right to self-defense. Although not in conflict with one another, these varying interpretations reveal what motivated activists to respond to rape and when and why activists deemed rape a political issue.

Rape and the Law in the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States

This chapter is an examination of rape law in the United States at mid-century. The law codified white male privilege, leaving both accused black men and rape victims of all races vulnerable to injustice before the law. Fears of false allegations and distrust of victims, most popularized by legal scholar Henry Wigmore, drove much of the injustice faced by victims. Likewise, racist tropes of depraved black male sexuality resulted in extreme injustice for accused black rapists, including the almost exclusive use of the death penalty for black men accused of interracial rape. The chapter provides an analysis of legal thought and practice to reveal the larger cultural environment that activists for social justice confronted in their quest for justice.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the frameworks and visions of the two major social movements that took up antirape organizing in the mid-to-late twentieth century United States – the black freedom movement and the women’s liberation movement. The dominant discourses on rape emanating from these movements privileged either narrowly defined racial or gender oppression. Many activists challenged these frameworks and pushed for an intersectional approach to the larger antirape agenda. The chapter gives a brief history of antirape activism in the decades prior to situate the work of mid-twentieth-century activists into a larger historical context. A brief chapter outline for the book is also included.

Rape and the Law in the Late 1970s

By the end of the 1970s, racial justice and feminist activists had gained significant ground in the legal arena. This chapter charts some of the major legal successes of those movements. Most notably from the feminist perspective was Michigan’s 1974 Criminal Sexual Conduct bill, the first complete overhaul of a state rape law in the nation. Hailed as a major feminist victory, the new law served as a model for other states nationwide. Feminist law reform strategies faced major opposition from opponents across the political spectrum, with debates often centering on contrasting beliefs of what constituted a fair trial. One reform which satisfied both racial and gender justice goals was the abolition of the death penalty as punishment for rape. The NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund brought the question of appropriate punishment in cases of rape before the Supreme Court in Coker v. Georgia (1977). The Court ruled in favor of Coker, and deemed capital punishment a disproportionate punishment in cases of adult rape. In the end, rape law reforms ultimately proved to be quite limited. The legal system was deeply steeped in pervasive racist and sexist cultural norms, creating significant barriers to effective change in the legal arena.