Joan Little
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Joan or Jo Ann Little (born 1953) was an African American woman whose trial for the 1974 murder of a white prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina, became a cause célèbre of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-death penalty movements.
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[edit] Early life
Little was born in Washington, rural North Carolina. Her mother was a "religious fanatic" who frequently consulted "root workers,"[1] or voodoo folk herbalists. Her father was a security guard in Brooklyn, New York. She was the eldest of six blood siblings, and was forced to care for her four half-siblings as well. This life seemed not to please the young girl, who took to running away and hiding.[citation needed] She soon fell in with an older crowd who supported her rebellion. Her social worker, Jean Nelson, who once called her an "escape artist," also noted her intelligence, telling her "some day you could do a lot of good."[1] As a teenager, she worked in the tobacco industry and as a waitress. In 1973, she went to work with a sheetrock finisher named Julius Rogers, whom she later accompanied to Greenville and later to Chapel Hill, where she became entangled with the law.
[edit] Involvement with the criminal justice system
Little's problems with the law began in 1968, when her mother Jessie Williams asked a judge to declare her truant and to commit her to the Dobbs Farm Training School in Kinston, North Carolina.[citation needed] After a few weeks at Dobbs, Little left, walking to a nearby service station where she and a friend hitched a ride to Washington.[citation needed] Her mother realized she was not released in accordance with standard procedures, and sought to normalize her daughter's situation by requesting an official release and sending Joan to live with relatives in Philadelphia.[citation needed] There, she enrolled in and graduated from high school. Three weeks after graduating, she developed a thyroid problem, and returned to North Carolina for an operation. At the end of 1973 in Jacksonville, she was charged with the possession of stolen goods and the possession of a sawed-off shotgun, but was not prosecuted.[citation needed] On January 3, 1974, she was arrested in Washington, North Carolina for shoplifting. The charge was likewise dismissed. Six days later, she was again arrested for shoplifting, a charge for which she was given a suspended six-month sentence. Six days after her release, she was again arrested and charged with three separate counts of felony breaking and entering and larceny.[citation needed] Her trial was set for June 3, when she, Julius Rogers, and two juveniles returned to Washington.[citation needed] The juveniles ended up in official custody during the same visit, during which time they were sexually harassed by a guard who offered them freedom if one of them would "give him some."[1]
Little was convicted on June 4, 1974, and asked to remain in Beaufort County Jail rather than be transferred to the Correctional Facility for Women in Raleigh, as would have been customary. Remaining in Washington, she said, would allow her to remain close to home, where she could work on raising her bond.[citation needed]
[edit] The murder
On August 27, 1974, a police officer delivering a drunken prisoner to the jail discovered the body of Clarence Alligood naked from the waist down on Joan Little's bunk. Alligood had suffered stab wounds to the temple and the heart area from an icepick. Semen was discovered on his leg.[citation needed] Little, the only female prisoner at the jail at the time[original research?], was missing.
[edit] The case
Little turned herself in to North Carolina authorities more than one week later, saying that she had been defending herself against sexual assault. She was charged with first-degree murder, which, had she been convicted, would have carried an automatic capital sentence.[original research?] The capital status of the case, and the fact that North Carolina was home to over one third of all the death penalty cases in the United States,[original research?] brought its attention to anti-death penalty and prisoners' rights advocates.[citation needed] The racial component attracted the attention of civil rights activists, and the gender issues did the same for feminists.[citation needed] The combination of these three factors, along with a sophisticated fundraising tactic,[original research?] allowed the Joan Little Defense Committee to raise over $350,000, which was enough to hire the experienced defense attorney Jerry Paul.[citation needed] The question of whether or not Blacks had equality in the American South caught the attention of the national media.[citation needed] Paul played on the mass media's tendency to simplify and stereotype complex issues by positioning the case as a poor, black woman persecuted by an uncompassionate, racist system.[original research?] He successfully petitioned to have the trial moved to Raleigh, which had a slightly more liberal jury pool[original research?], and is reported to have hired an astrologist as a consultant during the jury-selection portion of the trial.[citation needed] He also made liberal use of the jury's Southern Christian sympathies[original research?], characterizing his client as a religious woman who found solace in the Bible in times of trouble.[citation needed] The prosecution contended that Little was a lewd woman who seduced Alligood only to murder him to enable her escape.[citation needed] They attempted to play upon the racial prejudices of the jury.[citation needed] At that time the stereotype of the black woman as an immoral woman or prostitute was still common.[citation needed] They introduced Little's medical records as evidence, but the documents were barred from presentation to the jury.[citation needed] The combination of a sympathetic jury, an impressive defense fund, and Little's status as a cause célèbre[original research?] won her acquittal on August 14, 1975.[citation needed]
Joan Little was not freed after the trial, however. The remaining time on her sentence, plus charges of escape had to be addressed. She escaped prison once again, one month before she would have been eligible for parole.[2]
[edit] Personality
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The nature of Little's personality has never been clear. While it is obvious that she had problems with the law, it is difficult to gauge to what extent those difficulties were related to poverty and racial discrimination, and might have equally affected any of her peers, and the extent to which her individuality played into the development of her story.[citation needed] The defense used this ambiguity to his client's advantage, and Little herself never revealed her personality, an historian of her case describing her contemporary interviews as "always unsatisfying."[1]
Ms Little surfaced briefly in 1989 when she was arrested in a stolen car in New York City. She telephoned William Kunstler, who had assisted her in the past, for help.[2]
[edit] Effects
Her murder trial, occurring at the height of the feminist and black power movements,[original research?] focused national attention on the issues of a woman's right to defend herself from rape, the validity of capital punishment (especially in rape cases[original research?]), racial and sexual inequality in the criminal justice system, and the rights of prisoners in general.[citation needed] Little also authored a poem entitled "I Am Somebody", which was incorporated into a mural in San Diego's Chicano Park by the female muralists of Sacramento's Royal Chicano Air Force.
[edit] See also
- Harwell, Fred. A True Deliverance: The Joan Little Case (1980) Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-49989-1 (Edgar Allan Poe Award Winner, 1980, Best Non-Fiction Crime Book of the Year)
- Inez Garcia
- Yvonne Wanrow
