Hi, I’m Jackie Strohm, the Prevention & Resource Coordinator at the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape. Welcome to this episode of History You Should Know, part of the PA Centered Podcast. To celebrate and highlight stories of people who advanced the anti-sexual violence movement, particularly Black women, we are sharing a series of shorter episodes so you can learn all about the people and events that contributed to our movement During today’s episode, we will learn about Celia & Joan Little - they may have lived over a century apart, but their stories feel similar, even though they had different outcomes. As a warning, today’s episode will include descriptions of sexual violence. We encourage you to take care of yourself while listening. Celia In 1855, Celia, a 19-year-old enslaved Black woman, was convicted of murdering her slave owner, Robert Newsom, in a significant Supreme Court case, Missouri vs. Celia. Celia had endured five years of assaults by Robert, a Missouri widower in his 70s who purchased Celia when she was 14. She gave birth to two of her predator’s children. Celia started being courted by an enslaved Black man named George. After Celia became pregnant a third time, George said he could not continue being with her unless Robert’s abuse stopped. Celia warned Robert that she would hurt him if he ever came to her cabin again, and asked Robert’s two adult daughters for help. On the night of June 23, 1855, Robert tried to rape Celia once again. Celia used a stick and hit him in the head, resulting in his death. In Missouri in 1855, it was a crime “to take any woman unlawfully against her will and by force, menace or duress, compel her to be defiled,” which allowed women to argue self-defense when resisting an assault. But no one was sure if that law also applied to enslaved women. Celia’s lawyer argued that it did, and instructed the jury that a slave owner had no right to rape an enslaved person, making Robert’s death justifiable. However, the judge refused to give the jury those instructions, and instead, told the 12 white male jurors, “If Newsom was in the habit of having intercourse with the defendant who was his slave and went to her cabin on the night he was killed to have intercourse with her or for any other purpose and while he was standing in the floor talking to her she struck him with a stick which was a dangerous weapon and knocked him down, and struck him again after he fell, and killed him by either blow, it is murder in the first degree.” Although the law had come about to recognize an enslaved person’s right to use force to protect their life, it had not extended this right to include protection against sexual assault. Celia was found guility of murder in the first degree, and the jury sentenced her to death. Celia’s case was appealed to the Supreme Court of Missouri, with the argument that she had killed Newsom to protect herself from being raped by him. The Supreme Court refused the appeal, declaring Celia to be the property of her owner with no right to defend herself against sexual assault. While in jail, Celia escaped, but was later captured. Her execution was delayed long enough to allow her to give birth to her third child, though the baby was a stillborn. Then, more than a century later, 119 years to be exact, we have a similar story, but with a different ending. Joan Little In 1974, Joan Little (pronounced Jo-Ann), a Black woman in the Beaufort County Jail in North Carolina, was sexually assaulted by a white guard, Clarence Alligood. Joan testified that Clarence, who was nearly twice her size, had come to her cell three times between 10:00 pm and 3:00 am to solicit sex, finally forcing her at the point of an ice pick to perform oral sex. She testified she was able to grab the ice pick while he was seated on her bunk because he had let his guard down in the moments after his orgasm. She stabbed him repeatedly, and she testified he resisted fiercely and wrestled her, but that given his wounded state, she had been able to get free of him -- and then escaped from the jail. Since Joan had fled from prison, she was known as a fugitive, and was worried she would be killed on sight. She turned herself in a week later and was charged with first degree murder, which carried an automatic death sentence in North Carolina. There was a national outcry for justice for Joan Little, involving prominent civil rights and women’s rights activists, such as Angela Davis - who was quoted as saying, “Joan Little’s trial is important, and the real import is that they demonstrated that people can collectively generate the kind of power that can be earth-shaking, that can change lives, that can change society.” Rosa Parks also organized in Detroit. Joan’s trial brought attention to her being the first Black woman to cite self-defense during sexual assault against an accusation of murder. The racial component drew the attention of civil rights activists, and the gender component drew the attention of feminists. The combination of these three factors, along with sophisticated fundraising tactics, allowed the Joan Little Defense Committee to raise over $350,000. The question of whether or not black people were treated equally by the criminal justice systems in the American South drew the attention of the national media. Joan was not alone. Between 1974 and 1976, organizing by women of color brought national attention to the unjust treatment of Inez Garcia, Yvonne Wanrow, and Dessie Woods - all women of color imprisoned for murder after defending themselves from men who assaulted them. When the autopsy came back, it was concluded that Joan’s explanation of the incident was true. The autopsy concluded that the eleven stab wounds given to Clarence were in self-defense. During the trial, other women came forward to testify about Clarence’s history of sexual assault in prison, including African American women Ida Mae Roberson and Phyllis Ann Moore. They shared that Clarence had given them gifts in the form of snacks and magazines in exchange for sexual favors. Their testimony encouraged Joan’s jury to lean toward her defense. Joan was quoted as saying “My life is not in the hands of the court. My life is in the hands of the people.” The jury of seven whites and five African Americans deliberated for one hour and 25 minutes and found her not guilty by reason of self-defense. Larry Little, no relation to Joan, who championed her cause as the founder of the Winston-Salem Black Panther Party, was quoted as saying this was “The first time in the history of the United States where a black woman had killed a white man who was raping her, and was found not guilty.” Little was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Her case also has become well known in legal circles as a pioneering instance of the application of scientific jury selection. Joan Little enthusiastically joined other campaigns for social justice that paralleled her own case. Video footage of the 1978 march in Washington, DC to protest the conviction of the Wilmington 10 shows Joan Little with Larry Little and Angela Davis. Today, there are many people like Joan Little, prosecuted because they defended themselves from sexual violence, domestic violence, racist and transphobic attacks, still in prison all over the US. You can go to the Survived and Punished website to learn more about these cases and get involved in supporting them. Thanks for listening to this episode of History You Should Know, part of the PA Centered Podcast. To learn more about Celia & Joan Little, check out the resources shared in the episode description. To learn more about the history of the anti-sexual violence movement, check out PCAR’s free History and Philosphy eLearning course at campus.nsvrc.org.