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The Importance of Media, Public Image and Political Symbolism in the Trial of Joan Little

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The Importance of Media, Public Image and Political Symbolism in the Trial of Joan Little Walton 1 “Southern Justice on Trial”: The Importance of Media, Public Image and Political Symbolism in the Trial of Joan Little (1975) Lucy Walton Walton 2 On August 15th, 1975, Joan Little, her defense team, and her supporters standing outside the courthouse anxiously awaited the opinion of her jurors. Over one hundred newspaper representatives sat in the courtroom waiting to break the news.1 Little, a poor, Black, criminally charged woman was on trial for the murder of Clarence Alligood, her jailer-turned-sexual assailant whom she had killed in self defense while serving time for a breaking and entering charge. The Court charged Little with first-degree murder and if convicted Little would be sent to death row and executed in the gas chamber as her sentence. Her situation had become a nationwide cause celebre for women’s rights, Black liberation, and prisoners’ rights activists who had worked together to create a “Free Joan Little” movement that garnered nationwide support, working to shape public feelings about her. Thanks to their efforts she had become more than a woman she was a symbol of radical sentiments, and justice, or injustice, in America. Ten seconds after noon, only an hour and 18 minutes after the jury had withdrawn to deliberate the decision was announced.2 The verdict: not guilty. A normally stoic Little broke into tears of happiness and when asked how it felt to be declared innocent as she left the courthouse, “Feels good to be free”3 she responded. With the help of her team’s media strategy and the recreation of her personal image, Little had been acquitted against all odds. However, her victory would be short-lived. She remained guilty of breaking and entering, a charge that would still send her to jail, but was much less exciting to supporters. Little sat at the crux of several identities that put her at a disadvantage in the North Carolina court system; she was a woman, she was poor, she was uneducated, she was already criminally charged, she had a bad reputation, and most significantly she was Black. For all 1 Genna Rae McNeil, “The Body, Sexuality, and Self defense in State vs. Joan Little, 1974-1975.” The Journal of African American History (Spring 2008): 235-261. 2 The New York Times (New York). 16 August, 1975. 3 Ibid. Walton 3 intents and purposes Little should not have stood a chance in the court system. Larry Little,4 a supporter of Little, said, “North Carolina… has no intention of being fair with Miss Little […] the state is one of the most racist in the country.”5 But as historian Genna Rae McNeil writes, Little’s defense team understood the “necessary relationship between a visible, vocal, social movement and the outcome of the trial.”6 Rather than turning Little into another invisible tragedy to the racist judicial system, her team and groups of activists banded together to make Little’s case one known in every household, carefully crafting Little’s image into one that everyone would care about. On a micro level they reshaped Little from a woman with dubious past choices into a respectable figure. On a macro they turned her into a symbol of anti-racist, anti-sexist justice, giving large swaths of people a name behind which to unify. Journalist Milton Jordan wrote “she has become a star. Feminist groups, prison reform and Black groups took up her cause. She has become a symbol for all that’s wrong with justice in North Carolina and America.”7 Activists leveraged media to heighten the stakes of the trial for the nation. It was not just a murder trial, but stage to protest racism, sexism, classism and prison abuse. It did so in an intersectional way that brought disparate movements together under one name: The Free Joan Little Movement. To Joan Little’s supporters she was more than a woman on trial for murder. She was a symbol for their causes and a chance to give them a public victory. Little’s depiction as a symbol helped acquit her but once she was declared “not guilty” she served her symbolic purpose for these groups and lost her value. After the famous trial, her allies left her to handle her earlier criminal charge alone, abandoning her. 4 Larry Little is of No Relation to Joan Little. 5 “N.C Called the Worst Racist State.” New Journal and Guide (Norfolk), 26 July, 1975. 6 Emily Thuma. “Lessons in Self Defense: Gender Violence, Racial Criminalization and Anticarceral Feminism.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, (Fall/Winter 2015), 236. 7 Jordan Milion.” Making of a National Symbol- Joan Little.” The Baltimore Afro-American (Baltimore), 23 August, 1975. Walton 4 Since Little’s trial in 1975, minimal scholarship has been devoted to her, a surprising fact considering the impact her trial had in both setting legal precedents about self defense against rape and in creating a strategy for supporting criminally accused victims of sexual violence. One journalist, Victor Okoroji wrote after the trial “Miss Little’s trial and release have changed the life of the 21 year old woman […] These are likened to the events that catapulted Angela Davis to fame.”8 But Little failed to receive even a fraction of the acclaim that Davis has today. The only author to do considerable scholarship on Little is historian Genna Rae McNeil whose works focus on African American women’s support of Little and Little’s own perception of herself. Although I will reference these works through my paper I seek to broaden the lens by looking not only at African American women’s support of Little, but the public at large. I will investigate how Little’s supporters created an image of Little as a revolutionary hero with the help of the media. Finally, I will argue it is because of the symbolization of Little that she was abandoned after her trial and is ignored by historians to this day. Joan Little was 21 years old when she served time in the Beaufort Country jail for shoplifting, breaking and entering, and larceny. Little encountered the law many times in her early life but her time in Beaufort jail marked her first time actually being prosecuted for any of her crimes. She had been declared a truant by the state at age 15 and had been arrested for stealing before but had never been taken to trial for her criminal activity. Prosecutors would later point to her criminal history as proof of her guilt. On August 27, 1974 a night guard named Clarence Alligood entered her cell armed with an ice pick. Little testified “he said that he had been nice to me [Little] and it was time I be nice to him… to give him some.”9 She told the court that he had groped her, stripped her and then forced her to perform oral sex on him, which 8 Victor Okoroji. “Concern Growing Over Joan Little Original Charge: Joan Little is all Smiles.” New York Amsterdam News (New York), 27 August, 1975. 9 Defense Testimony of Joan Little: Testimony the Raleigh Court (1975) (Statement of Joan Little, Case Defendant). Walton 5 she all complied with, seeing the ice pick. “I didn’t know what he was gonna do. I didn’t know whether he was gonna kill me or not”10 she continued. During the assault Alligood lost his grip on the ice pick and Little managed to grab it. Fearing for her life Little hit him repeatedly and killed him in self defense. Anticipating the potentially deadly consequences if Alligood’s fellow guards found her over his body, Little fled, though she insisted that she had not known he was dead. In North Carolina, the “Outlaw Statute” declared that any fugitive of the law could be shot and killed by any citizen of the state making fleeing a dangerous risk. Though offered a route out of the country Little decided to remain in North Carolina to defend her actions. On September 3, 1974 she turned herself in to be taken to court. Little’s assault fell into the historical pattern of the battering, brutalization and rape of Black women by white men. Since the first slave was brought to what would become the United States white men had used their positions of power and sense of ownership of Black bodies as an excuse for sexually assaulting Black women without repercussions. Black activist Angela Davis wrote in her article about Little that a little more than a hundred years ago, there were few Black women who did not have to endure the humiliating and violent sexual attacks as an integral feature of their daily lives. Rape was the rule: immunity from rape was the exception.11 Davis wrote this practice was accompanied with the stereotype that Black women were “motivated by base, animal-like sexual instincts. It was therefore no sin to rape her.”12 Thus, white men saw the Black female body as something to be exploited without consequences because it was not rape if the act was with a Black woman. One Beaufort County resident, Hardy Henry, expressed his doubt that Little was defending herself from assault claiming, “She wasn’t 10 Ibid. 11 Angela Davis. “ Joan Little: The Dialects of Rape.” Ms. Magazine, 1975, 3. 12 Ibid., 3. Walton 6 defending her honor in that cell. She’d lost it years ago.”13 Many residents of Beaufort county believed, like Hardy, that because Little was a Black woman she could not be a victim of rape. The prosecution of Little depended on these racist assumptions about Black “Jezebels” and promoted the idea that because of her disreputable past she could not be raped.
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