“There Were Rapes!”: Sexual Assaults of African American Women and Children in Jim Crow

Abstract

Using data from 92 interviews, this article examines the narratives of African Americans’ experiences as children and young adults during Jim Crow in the Southeast and Southwest. It gives voice to the realities of sexual assaults committed by ordinary White men who systematically terrorized African American families with impunity after the post-Reconstruction south until the 1960s. The interviewees discuss the short- and long-term impact of physical, mental, emotional, and sexual assaults in their communities. We discuss the top four prevalent themes that emerged related to sexual assault, specifically (a) the normalization of sexual assaults, (b) protective measures to avoid White violence, (c) the morality of African American women, and (d) the long-term consequences of assaults on children.

Keywords

sexual assault rape segregation stress syndrome (collective PTSD)coping

The historical systematic sexual assaults and rapes committed by White men against African Americans are sparsely examined and largely absent in mainstream discourse. Although a few historians have documented the recorded accounts of sexual assaults and rapes against Black women (Gwaltney, 1993; McGuire, 2011; Williamson, 1995), most attention on sexual assault during Jim Crow emphasizes the imagined probable rape of White women by Black men (Moran, 2003; Spickard, 1989; Talty, 2003; Wiggins, 1983). In this article, we focus on the contemporary impact of interracial sexual assault by White men against African Americans during the era of U.S. Jim Crow (late 19th century to 1960s).

African Americans endured racial violence at the hands of Whites that was sexualized and gendered. Relying on decades of sexual assault research, it bears noting that rape is not about individual compulsion to lust and eroticism. Utilizing a sociological perspective, we focus on the collective traumatic experiences of sexual assault and rape and how threats of rape are used as a form of social control and power to ensure subordinate groups remain “in their place.” In this article, we outline the seldom discussed frequency of attempted and completed rapes of Black women and children at the hands of White men, and how it impacted children growing up in this environment. The children of Jim Crow are now older African Americans who largely still carry the memories of White collective violence against African Americans. Using interviews from 92 older African Americans in the U.S. South, we examine the prevalent themes shared in their interview narratives, specifically the emphasis on (a) the normalization of sexual assaults, and (b) protective measures to avoid it, (c) morality of African American women, and (d) the long-term consequences of assaults on children.

Contextual Literature

Interracial Sexual Assault in Slavery and Jim Crow

The rape of enslaved African and African American women from the 17th century until Emancipation in 1865 is well documented as a “weapon of terror” (Roberts, 1997, p. 29). The frequent and vicious horrors of rape are not uncommon in the autobiographies of enslaved persons before the Civil War (see Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom by Catherine Clinton, 2004; Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl by Harriet Jacobs, 2000; Slave Life in Georgia by John Brown and Lewis Chamerovzow, 2012; Slave Testimony by J. Blassingame, 1979; and Sojourner Truth: Ain’t I a Woman? by Patricia McKissack and Pat McKissack, 1994). Such assaults at the hands of Whites enforced economic, emotional, psychological, spiritual, physical, reproductive, legal, political, and ideological dominance over African Americans (Lerner, 1972).

The threat of rape, sexual assault, and actual completed rapes ensured domination and social control over Black women’s bodies, which were legally and politically deemed White “property” (Clinton, 1984; Jennings, 1990; McGuire, 2011). Sexual assaults during slavery created and maintained an ideology that Black women were loose, immoral, and overly sexual. These stereotypes created in slavery still thrive today (Collins, 2005; Davis, 1978). Whites also enjoyed an economic benefit, as any child conceived would be classified as a slave and boost profits. In a patriarchal society, the female slave’s bondage included the inability to control her body, sex life, and her fertility; her master had total control (Jennings, 1990; Litwack, 1980).

Sexual violence did not end at Emancipation in 1865, but were frequent occurrences to continue the subjugation of African Americans during legal segregation until the 1960s. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins argues that after emancipation when enslaved women were set free, they were vulnerable to even more rapes:

No longer the property of a few White men, African American women became sexually available to all White men. As free women who belonged to nobody except themselves and in a climate of violence that meted out severe consequences for their either defending themselves or soliciting Black male protection, Black women could be raped. (Collins, 2005, p. 65)

Historians have documented the prevalence of sexual violence by White men as African American women and girls went about their daily routines such as working (particularly as domestics in Whites’ homes), walking down the street with friends, using public transportation, and relaxing within their own private residences (McGuire, 2011; Van Wormer, Jackson, & Sudduth, 2012). Notably, the sexual assaults against boys and men were often evident in historical documents within the context of lynchings; lynching victims who were disproportionately (though not exclusively) males were frequently sodomized and castrated (Allen, Lewis, Litwack, & Als, 2000; Dray, 2003; Ginsberg, 1996).

Historical accounts of interracial sexual violence in Jim Crow suggest multiple reasons for rape in Jim Crow. Similar to rape in slavery, feminist scholars emphasize the element of power and domination in rape (Collins, 2005; M. D. Smith, 2001; Wasco, 2003). Throughout the era of Jim Crow, White men or “night riders” would enter Black homes and communities to inflict incredible racial violence including physical and sexual attacks. Night riders would often attempt to gain economic capital in Black communities, such as by invading the homes of prosperous Black farmers in an attempt to steal their land; the consequences of farmers who resisted included the rape of their wives and daughters, and their homes burned down (Bowser, 2007). In addition, the sexual element to rape cannot be overlooked; interracial rape served to fulfill White men’s sexual gratification, particularly to engage in sex acts that would have been inappropriate to engage in with a White woman given the cult of domesticity (M. D. Smith, 2001; Williamson, 1995).

There was little to deter Whites from committing racist sexual violence. Historically, the raping of African Americans in the United States was not considered a crime (legally and/or in practice). The laws nearly always sided with Whites for African Americans were restricted from testifying in a court of law against a White man (Evans, 2004; Huie, 1956). The White men committing these crimes rarely received any punishment or sanction, and were not uncommonly carried out by White men with local power and influence such as police officers or “upstanding family men” with wives and children (Litwack, 1980, 1998; M. D. Smith, 2001; Talty, 2003; Williamson, 1995). African Americans who did report being the victims of violence commonly faced retaliation, such as physical violence, death threats, and firebombs on their property (Bowser, 2007; Chafe, Gavins, & Korstad, 2001).

It does bear noting that although Jim Crow is often defined as the period from 1877 to the mid-1960s (Feagin, 2006), momentum toward greater racial equality was experienced with passage of key legislation such as the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education and 1964 Civil Rights Act. Although a White supremacist ideology lays at the foundation of U.S. legal, social, economic, and political structures, caution should be made in comparing events from the early 1900s, the height of the Nadir, with the late 1950s, for example.

Although the regularity of sexual assaults during slavery and Jim Crow is well documented, prominent sexual assault scholars including Brownmiller (1975) have been criticized for the exclusion of race and social class in theorizing systematic rape. Clinton (1984) argues that not only have sexual assault scholars ignored systematic rape of Black women throughout history but also have relied on racist perceptions emphasizing the risk that Black men posed to White women (Davis, 1978). For example, in the well-known 1955 lynching of Emmett Till, an African American boy who was brutally murdered for whistling at a White woman Carolyn Bryant, Brownmiller sided with the woman claiming the boy tried to “possess” Bryant (Brownmiller, 1975).

Consequences of Sexual Assault in Jim Crow

Recent studies provide evidence that contemporary African American women underreport their experiences of sexual assault “because they fear they will not be believed by those in the criminal justice system” (Hopkins & Koss, 1999, p. 705). Others echo this concern that contemporary rates of rape of Black women particularly “by white men is probably higher than official statistics reveal” (Curtis as cited by Williams, 1986, p. 5). Compared with White women, African American women are less likely to report a rape or attempted rape (Wyatt, 1992). Gavey (2005) suggests this underreporting is rooted in the legacy of tolerating African American sexual exploitation, which leads to lower expectations of receiving support.

The physical and psychological devastation that occurs for the victims of rape has been well documented (Clinton, 1984; Collins, 1999; Lerner, 1972; McGuire, 2011). The literature on the consequences of rape clearly states that the trauma of rape almost certainly leads to a lifetime of psychological challenges. Evidence suggests that women and girls who are sexually assaulted have a high likelihood of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Foa, Rothbaum, Riggs, and Murdock (1991) indicate that nearly 94% of women who are raped meet PTSD requirements shortly after the rape. The probability that African American women and girls who were raped in Jim Crow suffer from symptoms of PTSD is high (Carter, 2007; Mills & Edwards, 2002; Pearlin, 1999).

Preliminary findings indicate that experiencing the trauma of rape, sexual molestation, and combat exposure as well as witnessing someone being badly injured or killed are high predictors of developing PTSD (Amir & Sol, 1999; Bryant-Davis & O’Campo, 2005; Horowitz, Widom, McLaughlin, & White, 2001; Kessler & Zhao, 1999). Accordingly, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.; DSM-5; American Psychiatric Association [APA], 2013) has cited some of the symptoms associated with trauma. The symptoms include avoidance of triggers, triggered flashbacks, crying, sadness, shame, loss of trust, hyperarousal, and being emotionally upset. These symptoms are evident among the trauma survivors of rape, torture, humiliation, violence, and murder. Civilians in war-torn combat zones and occupied territories who both experienced violence and lived in an environment of potential violence, also exhibit such indicators of trauma (Stiglmayer, 1994). (Notably, some scholars [Bowser, 2007; Feagin, 2009; Jennings, 1990] argue that living in the Jim Crow south was similar to a combat zone for African Americans.) Some rape survivors struggle with intimacy issues, and young girls report a complete loss of identity (Pierce-Baker, 1998; Mukamana & Collins, 2006; S. L. Williams et al., 2007). For example, a young woman in Rwanda, Olga, recalls how she felt after she was raped:

With that rape I lost my identity as a girl. When a friend of mine invites me to a party I can’t go. I used to attend parties before the genocide but now I prefer not to go there because I don’t know if when I go I have to go with the girls or with the women. I am not a girl and I am not a woman. I don’t know who really I am! (Mukamana & Collins, 2006, p. 153)

In this article, we explore the narratives of older African Americans who lived in the U.S. Jim Crow South who describe their experiences and perspectives of living in legal segregation. Our goal is to better understand their life experiences within the context of the broader patriarchal and racial hierarchy, and to give voice and validity to their life stories. We use a sociological lens to examine the collective long-term consequences of the systematic sexual violence by Whites in the African American communities.

Method

Our data are from 92 interviews with African Americans who grew up in the Jim Crow era. Participants were recruited using a snowball sample beginning with community leaders and ministers in four communities in the Southeast and Southwest United States. In the Southeast, 52 respondents were interviewed (37 women and 15 men). The majority (65%) were more than 70 years of age, with the rest between 52 and 69 years old. In the Southwest, 40 respondents (25 women and 15 men) were interviewed. The majority (75 %) of the latter were more than 70 years old, with the rest between 58 and 69 years old.

In both regions, about two thirds of the participants held relatively low-paying jobs (such as domestic worker or hospital aide) during their primary work lives under legal segregation, and most of the rest held modest-paying jobs, such as school teacher in a segregated school. Despite unequal access to educational resources, nearly all the participants reported a strong commitment to education, and the majority managed to secure at least a high school diploma.

Nearly all the interviews took place in the home of the respondent and lasted 1-2 hr. A guided interview schedule was used asking a series of open-ended questions about their social and economic lives of Jim Crow. Although some of the respondents were children during Jim Crow, the majority of respondents engaged in markers of adulthood during Jim Crow (marrying, raising a family, and working). The respondents were interviewed using an interview schedule with a series of open-ended questions about their social and economic lives in the total institution of Jim Crow.

The interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis. Several times during the interviews there were moments when the participants asked for the recorder to be shut off; the interviewer obliged, and immediately following the interview, the first author would write down key details. The narratives presented in this article are direct quotes as transcribed from the interviews, but have been lightly edited for readability. (For example, utterances such as “uhhh” and repeated words not used for emphasis, such as in “She was a, was a teacher” were deleted.)

The product of each interview is a narrative of an oral history (Gubrium & Holstein, 1997). As Riessman (1993) points out, researchers do not have direct access to their participants’ experiences, but instead obtain representations of experience, which are imbued with meanings, interpretations, deletions, and additions. Therefore, the unit of analysis for this study is African Americans’ narratives of their lived experiences during Jim Crow as they were constructed in face-to-face interviews with the first author.

The data were analyzed using standard qualitative iterative techniques and the extended case method (Burawoy, 1998), where the narratives were compared with existing theories such as the total institution (Goffman, 1961) and systemic racism (Feagin, 2006). We first engaged in “initial coding” (Charmaz, 1983; Glaser, 1978) or exploratory analysis to get a general sense of the data. In the initial coding stage, we read each interview transcript, including the probes and conversations that followed, and documented themes. Following the initial coding, which revealed broad themes in the interviews, we analyzed each transcript further using “focused coding,” where we examined more detailed similarities and differences in participants’ narratives (Charmaz, 1983). A variety of themes emerged from this analysis, each of which are described and exemplified in the “Results” section.

None of the respondents described experiencing a completed sexual assault, which, we speculate, was either because it did not happen to them or they were not willing to share this information given the culture of silence, shame, and victim blaming surrounding sexual violence (Pierce-Baker, 1998; M. D. Smith, 2001). The literature shows that some rape survivors keep silent about the rape, and those who tell fear rejection and risk the chance of losing the support of their families, friends, and community (Lorde, 1984; Pennebaker, Paez, & Rim, 1997; Pierce-Baker, 1998). However, nearly 50% of the participants did imply or recall some sort of sexual assault of friends, family (mothers and sisters), neighbors, or strangers in their community, or their own near-rape experiences.

To substantiate their accounts, we supplement the interview data with local and national Black newspaper archives. Unlike mainstream “White” newspapers, African American-operated newspapers, such as the Atlanta Daily World Newspaper, the Chicago Defender, the Baltimore Afro-American Newspaper, the Afro-American Newspaper, and the Philadelphia Tribune documented the details of a rape, testimony of the victim, perpetrator’s information, and response, if any, from the criminal justice system.

Results: Prevalent Themes

Normalized Assaults

In the interviews, a common theme noted by the respondents who discussed sexual assaults was the notion to protect oneself from the threats of White violence, especially White male sexual assaults. Many noted that their parents socialized them as children to be on their best behavior around Whites, and to listen to Whites but not trust them. In addition, many of the respondents who raised children during Jim Crow remarked that they shared the same advice with their children. A retired service worker in her late 60s shared her experiences of rape in her community when she was growing up:

There were rapes! The white man would rape girls. . . . If a white man see a half-way decent woman, if he wanted her, he went up and just grabbed her and start doing whatever he wanted to do to her. You know, she would fight, and say no, but he would beat her up, slap her, knock her down, and just, just take her. . . . My dad . . . and my grandfather . . . when it came to us being out and about, they always forewarned us to be on the very best behavior, no matter what that white person would say to us. Always “yes sir/no sir, thank you sir” or whatever . . . never show any attitude or any animosity for all that would lead to was either a beating, rape, or killing. (Bessie Bolden, 60s)

Bessie Bolden articulates the overt socialization she received from her family: Listen and defer to Whites. The threat of sexual assault was used to keep her in her place, which was in her predominately Black area of her segregated town, away from Whites. Importantly, this respondent takes it for granted that Whites would look for lack of deference as an invitation for violence. At the end of her narrative, she links physical assault, sexual assault, and murder. Again, sexual assault should not be reduced to some men not controlling their erotic desires, but as a powerful tool of systemic subordination.

The message to defer to Whites or suffer violence posed considerable challenges for African American children. On one hand, they were taught to obey Whites and show deference to them. Yet, they also knew that Whites cannot always be trusted. For example, in April 1916, the Chicago Defender ran a story about a 13-year-old girl who was assaulted after abiding by a White man. The child was living with her grandfather, who was on the grounds working. The White man came up to the house and asked the girl for a glass of water, which she obliged. The man entered the house, forced her upstairs, and raped her. The grandfather returned to the home hearing noises from the second floor of the house and found the rapist. The child was examined by two Black doctors, “both of whom stated that they found all the evidence of virginity and of rape.” (Chicago Defender, 1916, p. 1). As a typical occurrence during legal segregation, no charges were brought against the man, who was caught in the act of assault, and the case was dismissed.

One’s home is usually viewed as a refuge and safe space, although it was not uncommon for Whites to enter African American homes with the goal of committing violence, rape, and murder. African Americans faced threats from night riders, as well as from home invaders. One respondent in the Southeast, Elise Rowe, tearfully shared her horrific experience of an attempted rape:

I remember one Sunday afternoon . . . a white man came to our house. I must have been about 15. . . . This man knocked on the door. My mom was sleeping. . . . My brother was in the next room sleeping. I answered the door. The man looked like he was spellbound. It frightened me, so I started backing up and he started following me. He went straight through my mom’s bedroom and my brother’s bedroom. I ran . . . he was following me. My brother sat up in the bed, to see what was happening. . . . . He came behind him. I can remember . . . my sister saying, “Oh, no, no, Richard. No, no, no.” He was going to hurt him. . . . I ran up under the house and hid. He walked in the yard looking for me, and eventually he went on and got in the car. My dad wanted to know who he was. . . . I was never able to tell him who he was. I couldn’t remember telling him what he looked like. It frightened me. I was young and it frightened me. I knew that these things happened and I didn’t want that to happen to me. . . . It was terrible . . . it was very frightening. My brother wouldn’t have been able to do anything about it. (Elise Rowe, 80s)

This attempted rape took place several decades in the past, yet Elise Rowe described in much detail that terrifying day. Such events from long ago are more than “mere history,” for many of the participants still suffer at the memory, as evident by her weeping.

In Elise Rowe’s interview, much of her discussion of this attempted rape event was not focused on the near attack, but on her fear for her brother and father, who were powerless to help. The female members of the family knew that intervention by male relatives could have terrible consequences, even leading to their death at the hands of a White mob. Later in her interview, Rowe indicates that her brother was active in the civil rights movement, and it was difficult for him not to interfere; she recounts that her brother was eventually murdered, she believes for his outspoken views against the Jim Crow system. Although the gruesome murder of Elise Rowe’s brother was covered extensively by the local news, the respondent urged the interviewer not to reveal details of her brother’s horrific murder. Even decades after her brother’s murder, Elise Rowe still reported hesitation in having details shared that might compromise her anonymity, which was a common theme expressed by more than half of the respondents.

Although African Americans overwhelmingly viewed Whites with suspicion during Jim Crow, throughout the interviews many older African Americans referenced “good white folks,” particularly White women who would assist African Americans in a near-rape situation. A respondent in her 70s in the Southwest described how a White woman intervened when her sister was threatened with rape:

My sister [and I] were heading to my grandfather’s house, and my grandfather . . . he was a minister and he had one of those big uh wash tubs, number five, with a scrub board and stuff on it. We was going up there to my grandfather’s house. And my sister, who’s a year younger than me, she always had a mouth on her. . . . There was a white man who did say something to her one time and, she talked back. [The guys] got out and, hemmed her up, and they were gonna rape her if it hadn’t of been for a [white] lady that had came out with a broom. And this is what it was like in the, I think it was about [19]66, 67. I stayed up there until my dad came and got her. . . . I knew what my father and my grandfather always said, “A steel tongue makes a wise person,” and, and just watch what you say. And that’s what I did. (Wilma Pittman, 70s)

Similar to previous narratives, this respondent shares how she was socialized to understand the power that Whites maintained. The development of the “steel tongue” suggests that regardless of how you felt, silence and deference were life-saving strategies. African American women, young and old, who wanted to stand up for themselves risked being raped by White men.

Under Jim Crow, the basic desire to defend oneself could lead to being physically attacked or being killed. Although it could lead to violence, a few of the interview respondents noted strategies to resist Jim Crow subordination, such as by playing ignorant, crazy, shuffling, or outright defying and attacking Whites.

A respondent in the Southeast shares a personal example of how she fought back against a sexual predator. She begins by sharing the lessons she learned by her elders on surviving Jim Crow:

The only thing is me teaching, [my children] you know, is not to be caught out nowhere by yourself and different things. The one time . . . my mother let me went to pick some peas with a white man, one morning . . . I think he might have been up to something, but I say that. I got on in the truck and we went on down the road and, and ah, all of a sudden he’s reached over there to grab me. I was just beating that man like I was crazy. He yelled. Stop! Stop! I said, you keep your hands where they’re supposed to go ’cause they don’t go on me! I said, you leave me alone! I got out of the truck and went on, I wasn’t too far from home. I . . . walked back to my house.

She continues with many details on her father’s response to the attack:

So as I was going back my Daddy and my Mother and the man’s brother was standing right there talking. They said, “what you back? I thought you was going.” . . . And I went over there and told everybody. [The man in the truck] begged me not to tell somebody and I went over there and told them. And my Daddy got so mad, he said, “I’m going to kill that cracker! I’m going to kill him!” [His brother] said, “No you ain’t. You ain’t going to kill him. I’m going to kill him!” That was his brother saying. His brother saying you know not to touch no girl like that. That is a little young girl! . . . I was more mad than I was scared! Cause I ain’t wanting no man to touch me. . . . [His brother] said [to the man], “How would you feel like if you had a daughter and a black man was caught with her. You would, you would be ready to hang him, wouldn’t you.” And he say, “Yeah, I recon’ I sure probably would have.” “Well, that’s how he feels about you. He feels like killing you right now.” . . . My Dad was ready to kill him. And he say, “You wouldn’t want me to touch your child. That’s right. Well, I feel about mine just like you feel about yours.” [My mom] said [to me], “you did right by coming to tell. A lot of people would try to make like they scared and don’t come up and tell it right then. You told it right then. And you done good.” I said, “That’s what I’m a do anybody touch me that’s don’t suppose to touch me, I going to tell them. I’m a good girl, my Mama raised me.” (Vivian Simon, 70s)

This respondent shares her experiences with assault at the age of 13. Her father was outraged, yet the police were not summoned and the White man was never held accountable for molesting the child. We also see the role that other Whites played in Jim Crow; the man’s brother serves as an intermediary between the White attacker and the African American family, and appears to appease the African American family. The respondent ends her narrative with pointing out that she is a “good girl.” Again, we glimpse the victim blaming and shame of sexual assault, which is justified for “bad girls.” The burden often falls on young victims to prove they were not at fault and should not be blamed for the molestation. The respondent’s strength is shown by her actions in spite of what she was told by her White attacker: She physically fought him back, then defied his demands and reported the assault. Although it ended well for this respondent who lived to share her ordeal, this was not always the case in Jim Crow where Blacks were frequently punished for reporting the atrocities committed by Whites.

Vivian Simon notes that she experienced this attack as she was trying to earn money by picking peas. Jim Crow offered few opportunities for economic sustainability for African Americans. White perpetrators were aware of African American impoverishment and used it to manipulate children and their families. With a lack of resources, young children were susceptible to being lured by promises of money, gifts, or work. In their efforts to obtain employment to secure the economic stability of their families, Black girls and women were vulnerable to sexual advances, abuse, and rape at the hands of White men.

All too often White men lured African Americans into unsafe spaces for the purpose of sexual exploitation. For example, the Chicago Defender profiled a 1947 attack where a 35-year-old married White man convinced a 14-year-old girl who had previously babysat for the family, that she was needed to work at 4 a.m. because his wife was ill. According to the girl, “Cole drove to a secluded spot outside of town and threatened to kill her if she didn’t submit to his advances.” The child admitted that the White man made her undress to his satisfaction. The mother, suspecting something wrong as she watched the man drive off in the wrong direction, called the police, who found the partially naked White man and girl on the outskirts of Goldsboro, North Carolina (LeFlore, 1947, p. 3).

The literature on child sexual abuse provides overwhelming evidence of short-term and long-term consequences such as psychological, emotional, physiological, and social injury (Foa et al., 1991; Horowitz et al., 2001). As most rape survivors can attest, these scars may last a lifetime. While there was no psychological counseling or rape trauma centers for these young victims, there was also no guarantee that the most basic physical or medical assistance would be available. The New Journal and Guide reported in 1932 on a rape in Pennsylvania, where a 62-year-old White man raped an 11-year-old child while she was “delivering the [rapist’s] week’s washing to him.” The child was taken to a doctor to be examined; however, none of the White doctors in the town would examine her. The traumatized young child was taken to another town, “where a white doctor examined her and verified she had been raped” (New Jounal and Guide, 1932, p.1) After a brutal attack, the child suffers even more cruelty by being turned away by professional personnel, as well as the criminal justice system.

Many of the Black newspapers noted that the rapists were upstanding members of the White community, or friends with local law enforcement, which would guarantee they would not be prosecuted for any of their crimes. The practice of allowing White men to negotiate and avoid prosecution was widespread throughout the south. In Kentucky, on April 11, 1931, the New Journal and Guide reported the rape of a 16-year-old girl who was raped by her employer; after the child reported the rape, the police allowed the man to leave town. Similarly, in Birmingham, a White man who hired her as a domestic raped 12-year-old, Murdus Dixon, at knifepoint, and police refused to arrest the man (McGuire, 2011, p. 12). In the month of August of 1947 in Meridian, Mississippi, a wealthy White oil dealer lured Ms. Ruby Atee Pigford from her home with the promise of a 70-cent per hour babysitting job. Instead of driving to the job, he drove her to a roadhouse, beat her unconscious, raped her, and dragged her bound body from the bumper of his car. Although a picture of her bloodied body appeared in the Pittsburgh Courier, an all-White male jury recommended mercy for the rapist, Ralph Betts (McGuire, 2011, p. 36).

Protection From the Threats of Rape: Avoiding Whites

Interview respondents frequently discussed the messages they received from Black elders about how to defend themselves from White threats. A respondent in the Southeast recalls the diverse strategies her father used to protect his daughters:

My dad use to have his gun by his side. He didn’t allow white men to see us. If a white man came to our house to sell something or pick up payment for a bill, my dad would tell us girls to go in the house and stay out of sight. He knew about the bad things that happened to girls and he didn’t want it to happen to us. We would stay out of sight and hide. (Wilma Oliver, 60s)

Knowing the frequency of assaults against children, this father tried to shield his daughters from the painful realities of Jim Crow. Wilma Oliver’s father kept a weapon on hand and insisted his daughters stay out of sight of White men. Many of the respondents noted they would cope with sexual violence in Jim Crow by avoiding any contact with White men.

Although attacks could happen at any moment even at church or in one’s private home, nighttime was an especially dangerous time for African Americans. Under the cover of night, Whites collectively imposed racial violence. A former professor recalls his first memory of encounters with Whites and describes his mother’s warnings:

My mother used to insist that I always be in the yard before the sun go down. I could not understand that. Until one day, they call them night riders, they kidnapped a Black kid and they sodomized him and castrated him. My mother said, “Now you see why I want you to stay in the house.” . . . Night riders would come, white guys would come to the Black community in trucks and cars and kidnap Black kids and stuff of that nature. . . . That happened in other communities. . . . I’m sure the adults knew who these people were. But who could they turn to? There was nobody. The NAACP would send people through as representatives but you had, that was a hush, hush thing and it was held at a church and people were very quiet about where they were going to have these meetings because the church could be burned to the ground. It happened in other communities. . . . Black people just disappeared. (Phillip Bailey, 60s)

Reflecting on the routine brutality of “night riders,” this man describes the severe physical and psychological injuries suffered by racially targeted Black families. Although females were the most frequent targets of sexual violence, males were also besieged by rape. Black citizens did sometimes resist, such as threatening Whites with a weapon, as alluded to in the previous narrative of a father who kept a gun at his side. However, even this defensive strategy risked violence on a larger scale, including mass lynchings and burning of churches (Bowser, 2007; Dray, 2003; Skloot, 2010; Tolnay & Beck, 1992). As referenced in Elise Rowe’s previous account, African Americans (and their children) who were perceived to be community organizers for political meetings were especially at risk.

Another prevalent theme related to avoiding White men noted by the interview respondents was turning to the African American community for support, particularly turning to the church and God. Cynthia Jamison noted,

The only way you will get through anything, you’ve got to put God first. You have to. You have to. And you have to just ask for guidance, you have to pray, you have to read the Bible, and you—that’s the only way you’re going to make it. . . . That’s what the Bible said: Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven, so the king is God and everything else will just fall into place. So, that’s, nowadays, that’s the only way they’re going to make it. That’s the only way, is stay in church. You know, pray, pray a lot. Because they not going to be able to make it out there on their own . . . we had to go to prayer meeting, choir rehearsal, Bible study, Sunday school, morning service, afternoon service, night service and our day was to sit in church all day on Sundays and that was it. (Cynthia Jamison, 60s)

Similar to Cynthia Jamison’s account, another respondent noted being socialized by her mother to stay away from White men and stay in the church:

We didn’t have nothing else to look forward to but God. So [my mother] always told us about God. I think we just, we was strong because we believe in God. . . . That’s what I think. . . .That’s all we had to do was go to school and church. And we had to walk to church. We didn’t have no car. ’Cause most of the time you stayed at church, well practically the whole day. ’Cause there is no other place that you can go . . . mostly we go to church. . . . Without that I don’t know, we didn’t have nothing. Without God. Going to church was great. (Lila Wise, 70s)

Many scholars have documented the critical role the church played in resisting and coping during Jim Crow: The church served as a space for organizing resistance to racial segregation, and provided emotional, spiritual, and communal support for African Americans (Thompson-Miller et al., 2014). However, it bears noting that Black churches were frequent sites of White supremacist violence, such as the 16^th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963, which was bombed before a Sunday service, killing four Black girls.

In addition, Black women and girls walking to and from church were often victimized by White men, such as noted in the earlier account by Herman Griffin. In addition, one of the early “organizational sparks” for the civil rights movement was the 1944 gang rape of 24-year-old wife and mother, Mrs. Recy Taylor, who was abducted at gunpoint by five White men in a car when she was walking home from church. Even though the men admitted they gang raped her and left her for dead, an all-White jury dismissed the case. Following the trial, Taylor received multiple death threats, and her home was firebombed. The White sheriff also accused Taylor of “being nothing but a whore around Abbeville” (McGuire, 2011, p. 33). Such tactics of victim shaming were a common tactic to silence those who challenged White male supremacy; Taylor eventually left town. During Jim Crow, African Americans not only had to contend with victim blaming within the criminal justice system but also were often denied support services from medical and mental health personnel based on racial segregation laws (Campbell, Wasco, Ahrens, Sefl, & Barnes, 2001; Wasco, 2003). In addition, African American victims who spoke out also had to worry about retaliation from the attacker and broader White community. In a 2010 Associated Press interview, the 90-year-old Mrs. Taylor noted, “They shouldn’t have did that. I never give them no reason to do it.” Throughout her interview, she insisted that “I was an honest person and living right” (Haines, 2010, p. 1). Mrs. Taylor challenges the stereotypical “loose” Black woman caricature, and asserts that she is an upstanding citizen worthy of dignity and respect (Haines, 2010, p. 1).

Morality of African American Women

When sexual assaults during Jim Crow were discussed in the interviews, a prevalent theme to emerge in the narratives was focused on the woman’s morality. Many of the participants took great measure to call out the virtuousness of Black “ladies” who were innocent victims of sexual assault. Herman Griffin, a respondent in his late 60s living in the Southeast, recalls a rape case in his community and its outcome:

This lady’s name was Elizabeth Smith and she was going to the sanctified church around the corner from Mt. Carmel Church. And she got kidnapped by a white guy, and he took her out in the woods and sodomized her and raped her. . . . He never served a day in jail. . . . She wasn’t even married or anything at the time. (Herman Griffin, 60s)

This respondent notes the lack of justice as the perpetrator never served any jail time, a typical response during Jim Crow. This assault and responding lack of justice impacts not only the victim, but the entire community who recalls the injustice decades later. (Note that we are sensitive to “victimhood” in sexual assault; as we are unsure whether the woman survived the attack, we use the word “victim” throughout the article.) By invoking the woman’s relationship with the church, Herman Griffin implies that the victim is a good person with upstanding morals. In his interview, he also adds that the woman was unmarried, perhaps suggesting she was a virgin. Given the historical era when this event took place, it was viewed as a disgrace on the family for a woman of any race to have sexual relations before marriage (Weinberg et al., 1983). Herman Griffin thereby challenges the stereotype that Black women were “promiscuous” and thus deserving of assault. Although the attempt was to dispel the stereotype that Black women were sexually available and thus “unrapable” (Collins, 2005; M. D. Smith, 2001; Williamson, 1995), it carries the unfortunate consequence of furthering the stereotype that some women are deserving of rape. In other words, this tactic was used to provide proof that Black people held the same conventions of morality as Whites, yet it is entrenched in a patriarchal notion of victim blaming that is still evident today.

Black newspapers often urged women to marry and achieve “true womanhood” as a means of negating harsh stereotypes about immoral Black women. In the Philadelphia Tribune on May 5, 1959, an article titled, “Negro Women Least Protected,” reinforced the message to Black women by Black newspapers and organizations such as the National Association of Colored Women that if Black women wanted protection, they should “get a husband to protect you” (Philadelphia Tribune, 1959).

Although today this can be critiqued as a patriarchal tactic, this was a calculated resistance strategy to defend against the recurrent rapes in Black communities. Black newspaper reporters understood the importance of emphasizing the morality and innocence of Black victims, particularly to appeal to sympathetic White Northerners (McGuire, 2011). Although Black churches were sometimes targeted by hostile Whites, the segregated churches often served as a refuge from White violence. The importance of God and the church was a prevalent theme in the interviews, both in surviving Jim Crow as a whole and in showing that many targets of violence were innocent victims. When participants spoke about sexual assault survivors and victims, it was important to note that these persons were “good” and moral, which counteracted the stereotypical “loose” and amoral African American whore (Collins, 1999; Thompson-Miller et al., 2014).

When recounting the life events of nearly a half century ago, it was evident in the interviews that these experiences still impact older African Americans today. Whether participants were sharing their own or a loved one’s story, or a stranger in their community, the participants demonstrated nonverbal cues, such as pausing, tearing up, showing signs of stress, or bursting with emotion. Although the events are history, the collective impact of physical, emotional, psychological, and sexual violence still impacts older African Americans today. It is our hope that future research examines the mental health impact, and symptoms of post-traumatic stress syndrome on older African Americans who bravely survived, resisted, and thrived under Jim Crow.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Author Biographies

Ruth Thompson-Miller is assistant professor of sociology at the University of Dayton. She is the first author of the book, Jim Crow’s Legacy: The Lasting Impact of Segregation. Her research specializations are race and ethnicity, mental illness, and the elderly.

Leslie H. Picca is department chair and associate professor of sociology at the University of Dayton. She co-authored Two-Faced Racism: Whites in the Backstage and Frontstage. Her academic interests focus on how everyday interactions maintain structural inequalities.

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