I usually try to stay away from focusing on February being “Black History Month.” As far as I’m concerned, black history should be discussed every day and so should all other kinds of histories.

Anyway, as regular readers of this blog know, I am an amateur history buff. I am sometimes tempted to re-enroll in school to get a graduate degree in history. Then I catch myself and remember that I can just as easily go to the library and check out a bunch of books for FREE. So no more school for me…

One of my touchstones in life is Dr. Barbara Ransby. I admire her for many personal reasons and I am in awe of her work as a historian. In particular, Barbara is the person who introduced me to the life and legacy of the great Ella Baker in her book “Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement.” If you’ve never heard of Ella Baker before or even if you have, I can’t recommend this book any more highly. After reading about Mrs. Baker, I became sort of obsessed with learning about other unsung black women who have made a significant contribution to history. It was this search that first led me to a woman named Mae Mallory.

Willie Mae Mallory was born in Georgia in 1927. She moved to New York City with her mother in 1939. Ms. Mallory died in 2007 at the age of 80. In between those years, Mae Mallory played an integral role in the black freedom movement in the U.S. Yet she is far from a household name and even those who know something about black U.S. history may never have heard of her contributions. Yet before there was a FREE ANGELA or FREE ASSATA campaign, there was a FREE MAE MALLORY one.

Mae Mallory fled from North Carolina to Ohio in August 1961 in fear for her life. She was a supporter and friend of black radical Robert F. Williams. Williams, who had fought in World War II, returned home to become the leader of his local North Carolina NAACP chapter in the mid-1950s. By the late 1950s, Williams had won the admiration of many black people through his resistance to racist violence by the KKK in Monroe, North Carolina. He was also vocal about the need for black people in the U.S. to practice armed self-defense. His approach was in stark contrast to Dr. King’s advocacy of nonviolent resistance.

During a trip to New York in 1959, Williams met Mae who was already a local community activist. As the mother of two children, she had filed a lawsuit against the New York Public Schools to demand better accommodations for black children. She had been part of a group that became known as the Harlem Nine. Mallory was so impressed with Williams that she established a group of supporters called Crusader Families to help Williams with his work in North Carolina. The group’s name came from Williams’ newsletter called the Crusader which kept people informed about the events taking place in Monroe, North Carolina.

Peniel E. Joseph provides a great glimpse of Mae Mallory’s activism in his book “Waiting Til' The Midnight Hour.” After the African Nationalist leader Patrice Lumumba was assassinated in 1961, a group of black american artists and activists took over the United Nations. On February 15, 1961, demonstrators protested outside the U.N. while artists like Maya Angelou made their way into the Security Council. He describes the incident as follows:

“From the balcony, the screaming voices of protestors could be heard. “Killers!” shouted one. “Murderers!” yelled another. “Lumumba! Lumumba! they chanted in unison. Adlai Stevenson, two-time Democratic presidential candidate and U.S. representative to the United Nations, stood to address the meeting. Leaning toward the microphone, Stevenson removed his glasses and searched for the source of the rapidly escalating commotion.

At 11:35 in the morning, protesters had entered the Security Council meeting where a melee broke out between security guards and demonstrators. Frantic crowds hustled out in a stampede of departing spectators and incoming security guards. LeRoi Jones and Mae Mallory huddled together and, in an instant, were cordoned off by security. Mallory engaged in a heated struggle that required the intervention of several guards. Police officers snatched Jones into a packed police van, banging his head against the paddy wagon’s metal frame doors while other protestors were dragged outside and charged with disorderly conduct. (pp.40-41).”

This account suggests that Mae Mallory considered the U.S. black freedom struggle as intimately connected to the colonial struggles taking place on the Continent. Only a few months after the U.N. demonstration, Mae Mallory would find herself accused of facilitating a kidnapping and aiding in the escape of Robert F. Williams from the United States.

In August 1961, Mae Mallory along with journalist Julian Mayfield were visiting Rob Williams and his family in Monroe. The summer of ’61 in Monroe had been characterized by racial tumult. It ended with Rob Williams being accused of kidnapping an elderly white couple, Mr. and Mrs. Bruce Stegall. He fled the country to Cuba allegedly with the help of Mallory and Mayfield. Mayfield went to Ghana and Mallory found her way to Cleveland Ohio.

Accused of false kidnapping charges, Mae Mallory along with the other Monroe Defendants would face a stiff prison sentence and years of legal troubles. While in Cleveland, Mallory would fight against being extradited to Monroe to face her charges. Mallory described Monroe as a place “where a black man has never been acquitted when accused of a crime against a whiteman, and a whiteman has never been convicted when accused of a crime against a blackman.” Because of her refusal to return to Monroe, Mallory would spend over a year and a half in jail in Ohio. While she was incarcerated at Cuyahoga County Jail, she wrote letters and shared her thoughts about the experience. Tomorrow, I will post “An Open Letter…To My Many Friends in America and Those in Foreign Lands” in which Mae Mallory describes her life in jail. It is my deepest hope that someone is currently working on a book about Mae Mallory’s life. She deserves much more recognition.

As part of my ongoing series about Laura Scott's life, today I will focus on how women prisoners in San Quentin were treated by staff and how they treated each other in the early 20th century. For this, I am once again relying on the first-hand account of an unnamed ex-San Quentin female prisoner published in the book “Crime and Criminals.” Let’s begin by exploring the apparent corruption of the staff at the prison:

Numerous instances of favoritism in this, as in other regards, are cited, especially where the prisoners were able to do embroidery and other fine needlework for the matron. There is supposed to be a stringent rule forbidding making presents to or doing work for a prison official. “If anyone were so interested as to investigate he would find ‘Buzzard’s Roost’, as the matron designated her abode, literally lined with pillows, table covers, pillow shams and other articles too numerous to mention, forced from the women who hoped by thus catering to her greed to enjoy some of the favors they knew she could and did give to those who worked for her.”

According to the former San Quentin woman prisoner, the matron who oversaw the “Female Department” was capricious and cruel:

“…she is described as having been an incurable gossip, of the foulest kind, showing special partiality to negresses, and completing a day’s work that averaged about five hours by leaving the establishment to itself at 4:30 p.m.”

The matron is alleged to have discouraged church services at the prison in favor of gambling and dancing instead:

“Many a time after the California Club women or the Salvation Army lassies had held their services in the office, the table would be rolled back and the negro women, and those of the white women who were low enough in their tastes to enjoy such a spectacle, would be called in and, while one would strum on a banjo, the rest would raise their clothes and give a leg show. The higher kickers they were the better the matron enjoyed it.” At the same time gambling would be in progress. An attempt to form a bible study class was stopped. No books that could be used for educational purposes were obtainable, and every effort toward self-improvement was discouraged.

It appears that this testimonial was offered by a white female prisoner because it is peppered with allegations of reverse racism while offering racist descriptions of female prisoners of color. For example, “White women who are cleanly and neat are next to some vile-smelling negress, Chinese or Mexican women.” The writer provides some interesting anecdotes that depict “negresses” like a cook who was promoted to “librarian” as terrorizing white female prisoners with impunity while being protected by the white matron of the prison. Here’s an anecdote that was offered:

It is charged that the abuse of the white women by the negresses was deliberately encouraged, and that repeatedly, to the accompaniment of guitars, the matron could be seen waltzing with the big negress cook, whose relations with her were a constantly discussed and most revolting scandal. This negress is said to have ruled the women’s department and, “notwithstanding the fact that she was one of the worst women there, by the matron’s own statement, yet she had the most privileges; she was never punished or even reprimanded for her dreadful statements and wicked talk; she was given the place of cook, which carries with it special privileges, such as warmth, baths, good food, being unlocked at night, and many other favors. The white women were at her mercy.” This is the woman whom the matron, as mentioned previously, appointed librarian.

This seems to be an unusual racial dynamic for that era but I honestly don’t know enough about the history of other women’s prisons to know if this was a unique circumstance or more common. Could it really be possible that a black prisoner like Laura Scott might benefit from her race in prison in 1905? This seems incredible to me. However, the overall account provided about life at San Quentin was corroborated by several other prisoners before it was published by the Prison Reform League. It’s a puzzle.

Some of the most harrowing stories in the account address the abusive treatment that some female prisoners experienced at San Quentin. They were basically tortured.

“A colored woman named Belle N. was serving a term of ten years. At the end of three years, after having been accorded the privileges accorded to all colored women, she turned on the matron and made threats that she would do her bodily harm. This woman was locked in her cell, and for three years, or nearly four, was never allowed to leave it save for one hour every Friday. Just one month before her release should have come she was removed to an insane asylum, and in two weeks was a corpse. A great, healthy animal she was, but dangerous to the matron.

The unnamed female prisoner who offered this testimony ends with these words: “I have not, and I cannot, tell one-hundredth part of the awfulness of the place, which is fitly described by all the women as a ‘veritable hell on earth.’”

Shortly after this account was written, the matron of San Quentin tendered her resignation. Upon hearing about the stories of the horrible conditions for female prisoners at San Quentin, women reformers mobilized to press for improvements and eventually successfully advocated for building a separate facility to house women in California. Hester Griffith (not related to Griffith J Griffith) was part of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She was a prison reformer who stated at the end of the published account that she had corroborated the allegations about the terrible conditions at the Prison for women. She also highlighted the allegation that in 1904 and 1905 visiting members of the state legislature had used the women’s quarters as a brothel. As Cristina Rathbone writes: “Rape had always been a problem – really the problem — for women in prison in America (p.66).” So we know that female prisoners at San Quentin must have been subjected to sexual abuse especially because they usually shared the same facility as male prisoners and more importantly male guards.

The next edition of Laura’s story recounts her second trial in 1907 for larceny.

Note: I have always appreciated librarians. They ROCK. In particular, the staff at the California Archives have provided me with INVALUABLE help. There is no way that I could write about Laura Scott without the information that they have helped me to unearth. Next time you have a moment, please stop by your local library and thank the librarians on staff for what they contribute to our culture.

In California as in the rest of the country, little to no attention was paid to women prisoners in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Their numbers were very small relative to male prisoners. In 1904, a year before Laura Scott first entered San Quentin Prison, there were 1,451 men and 27 women incarcerated there (source: First Biennial Report of the State Board of Charities and Corrections, 1903-1904, p. 11).

After a highly publicized trial, Griffith J Griffith was convicted of shooting and wounding his wife and served two years in San Quentin Prison from 1904 to 1906. Before he was imprisoned, he had been very successful as a California business man and philanthropist. He made his fortune in the mining business. Throughout his trial, he consistently maintained that the incident with his wife had been an accident. As soon as Griffith was released from prison in December 1906, he began working on an expose of the conditions there. His account of his time at San Quentin is published in a book by the Prison Reform League (that I have referenced on the blog before) titled “Crime and Criminals.” Everyone with an interest in the early history of prisons in the U.S. should read his account of his time behind bars.

Griffith also offered an expose of the terrible conditions for women at San Quentin that relied on the written account of an unnamed female prisoner who had spent several years incarcerated there. This account was corroborated by several other prisoners before it was published in Crime and Criminals. It is one of the only available first-hand testimonials of life inside San Quentin Prison for women at the turn of the 20th century.

Female prisoners at San Quentin were supplied with only the bare minimum of clothing and other items:

The state supplies each female prisoner every six months with six yards of white cotton, six yards of tennis flannel, and two pairs of hose. She is given also two blue denim dresses and one heavy blue flannel dress, called a “reception dress”. But it does not supply any underwear, corsets, underskirts, garters, hats, bonnets, coats or overshoes, and the sufferings of those who enter without such supplies and have no money to buy them are extreme. For there is no heat in the cells, and the thick walls, when thoroughly wetted and chilled, remain so all winter. ” It would have been amusing, were it not so pathetic, to see the straits to which the women were reduced to find something that would answer for underclothes, and they picked up from the sewing-room floor scraps of cotton flannel and, by great ingenuity and much labor, made garments. These garments, being most bulky, were refused by the laundry, as they broke the wringer.” In one of such garments the writer counted two hundred and forty pieces. The further comment is made that, although the state is supposed to issue the supplies previously mentioned every six months, they are habitually held back. If, therefore, for example, a woman’s supplies are due in April and she is to be released in May, she will be told that the supplies have not arrived, and will leave the prison without getting them.

What kind of work did the women at San Quentin Prison do?

From eighty to a hundred suits of underwear have to be made each week for the use of the men, but this, like the other work, is divided up. One woman acts as cook and there is a diningroom girl, whose duties are entirely below stairs. Nothing is taught that can be of the lightest use to the prisoner after her discharge, the accomplishments to be learned being cigarette smoking — each woman receiving every Monday afternoon her sack of tobacco and package of papers — and other vices. As to which the writer remarks : ” Nearly every woman there has voiced the sentiment, not once but many times : ‘I shall be a thousand times worse a girl when I leave this living hell than I ever dreamed I could be.’ And it is true, for the viler, lower traits are so encouraged, and whatever better impulses one possesses are so smothered and killed, that the entire nature is changed for the worse. This is no idle statement, for we all know that constant fear breeds hate, and from hate spring all the baser passions.”

Interestingly this account about life at San Quentin at the turn of the century spans the years when Laura Scott would have been incarcerated at the prison. Given this reality, when Griffith’s unnamed source mentions that a two-time negress convict worked as the dressmaker of the prison, one might wonder if this could have been Laura Scott herself. Remember that her occupation was listed on prison and arrest records as dressmaker/seamstress. Many of the dates mentioned in the account range from 1906 to 1909. These would have years that overlap with Laura’s time as a prisoner at San Quentin.

The next installment of this story will focus on the purported racial dynamics between women prisoners as well as on how female prisoners were treated by staff (both male and female) at San Quentin. Stay tuned!

I think that the re-entry industrial complex is a racket. Yet real people get out of prison and jail every single day and need to navigate hostile waters on the outside. One such person is Tracey Stevens who narrates her story. I think that her words are poignant and should compel us to REALLY focus on providing opportunities for formerly incarcerated people.

Entering San Quentin for the first time at the turn of the 20th century as a prisoner would likely have been a terrifying experience for most 19th century women. The prison was infamous for its brutal treatment of inmates and for its extremely poor conditions. Below is a partial description of the women’s quarters of the Prison from a book titled Crime and Criminals.”

“A door opens from an office, and you enter a place that looks for all the world like a bear pit, with its thick, gray walls on four sides and cement floor. This pit, by actual measurement, is 60 ft. by 90. Out of this oblong a building, 40 by 20, is taken; so, if you are good at figures, you can see just what room is allowed for clothes lines, exercise, garbage cans, etc. The feet of these poor women never touch the ground of mother earth, and all exercise, which is optional, has to be taken on this cement floor. Midway in the place is the hopper, and on the other side hang the thirty or forty buckets used in the cells from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. Opposite stand the immense garbage cans, and, as they have no covers, the aroma that greets the olfactory nerves is indeed overwhelming. No benches, whereon one might sit to get the sun, are in the pen, and the matron will not allow the women to carry out a chair; so, if one must have a little sun and air, the only alternative is to squat on the stairs leading out of the yard to the cells, or sit on the cement flat and let one’s feet hang down. Either plan is conducive to sorry comfort, helping the rheumatism and stiffness of joints so much in evidence among the inmates. Why cannot the warden allow a few benches to be placed along the gray walls?’ was asked many times, and the reply was that seats would injure the cement! Never mind the women. They are here for punishment; and I can add feelingly that no stone was left unturned to see that they got all that was coming to them.

“The hopper referred to deserves a special article.It is situated in the laundry room, and is an oldfashioned thing, about eighteen inches in diameter. Into this must go the contents of the buckets I have mentioned, and as this deposit must take place as soon as the women are dressed, the scene that follows beggars description. There were two large holes in the floor of this laundry, and as the filth from human bodies accumulated and overflowed the hopper, a stream ran into these holes and this filth flowed, under the dining-room and kitchen, out under an office, emitting a stench that finally attracted the attention of some officer. The matter was then remedied slightly, but the vile conditions of the hopper remain.

“The pen, or pit, is also the playground at night of an ever increasing army of the most gigantic rats, and the stairs, platforms and yard bore unmistakable evidence of their nocturnal ramblings. As the women emerged from their cells in the early morning they reminded one of cave-dwellers, and the agility which had to be used to clear away these remembrances of his ratship was something long to be remembered. They also invaded the kitchen and pantry, and mute evidence of their presence was often seen in the beans, rice and other foods, if the cook was not careful. Try, if you can, to imagine the air in such a place. Small wonder that the health gives way, and that tuberculosis, rheumatism, sore throat and kindred diseases are prevalent; while the only remedies are a handful of calomel at night, and a dose of salts in the morning, ladled out by the wholesale to the miserable creatures.

These were the conditions that greeted Laura Scott when she arrived at San Quentin Prison. She spent every day and night from August 8, 1905 until her June 8, 1906 discharge sleeping in one of fifteen 7 by 10 foot cells perhaps with one or two other women crowded together. Her cell would have included: “Old-fashioned wooden bedsteads, with boards for springs, [that] are covered with hard straw ticks and heavy gray blankets.” She would have had to roll up her coat for a pillow or “collect enough cotton flannel pieces from the floor of the sewing-room to form one.”

Laura Scott was one tough lady though. Not much seems to have rattled her. In March 1905, a man named Frank McVeigh hit Laura over the head with an ax almost cracking her skull. She went to the police station to give her statement about what transpired and then calmly walked out still bleeding. An account of the incident appeared in the March 13 1905 edition of the Los Angeles Herald under the headline: “Negress' Head Too Hard Even For Ax: Racial Characteristic of Skull Probably Saves Woman From Fatal Injury.” Putting aside the supreme racism of the headline, it paints an incredible portrait, doesn’t it? Below is the entire article which gives us incredible insight into who Laura Scott was:

Because she asked him to repay a small sum of money which he had borrowed from her a few nights previous, Laura Scott, a negress, who lives on San Pedro street, was made the victim of an assault by Frank McVeigh, also a negro. That she was not instantly killed was due as much to the racial characteristic of a thick skull as to anything else, for McVeigh hit her on the head with a heavy hand ax and succeeding in cutting a deep gash from which the blood flowed freely.

According to the story told to the officers by the Scott woman, McVeigh borrowed some money from her a few nights ago, and promised to give it back Tuesday. Last night, when she went for the money, the woman found that McVeigh had gone to 131 Central avenue. Thinking to get her money before it was all spent for liquor, the woman followed McVeigh to the Central avenue place and found him there. When she asked for her money McVeigh seized a hand ax and hit her over the head with it.

McVeigh says the Scott woman has been persecuting him for some time and that the blow he dealt her on the head was only to warn her that he was not to be bothered.

The pair was taken to police headquarters and McVeigh locked behind bars. Although she had been hit a powerful blow and the scalp had been cut open the Scott woman did not lose consciousness for an instant, and after she gave her testimony to the desk sergeant walked out of the station as though nothing unusual had occurred.

This gives a new meaning to the term hard-headed. Could this incident be the culprit for that scar above her left eyebrow that I referenced in a previous post? We can only speculate…

Note: Based on suggestions from a couple of readers, I will be posting the installments of Laura’s story on a regular schedule. They will usually appear on Fridays. Thanks for the good suggestion and thanks for reading.

by Danny Lyon

When a group of young women in rural Georgia were placed under lock and key after protesting segregation at the local library, photos like the one above, which was snapped through the bars by new journalism pioneer Danny Lyon, helped secure their release. – from Flavorpill

When we last left the story of Laura Scott, I was previewing the fact that I would be sharing more about her life in the coming weeks. Well my first discovery was that the Bertillon card that I purchased actually represented her second incarceration at San Quentin Prison in 1908. That’s right, from what I have been able to gather so far, Laura Scott did at least two stints at San Quentin. The first seems to have been in 1905 and the second in 1908. However, my research is ongoing so I could still discover new information that could change these facts.

In 1905, Laura Scott was arrested in Los Angeles County. The charge was grand larceny. She was sentenced to one year at San Quentin Prison. Two items appeared in the Los Angeles Herald which provide us with the context for this incident. First, this on July 14th, 1905:

Then, this on August 5, 1905:

“Laura Scott, negress, pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of grand larceny and was sentenced to one year in San Quentin prison. The woman was accused of stealing (.85?) and a gold watch and chain from Carson. ”

We have an unusual amount of information about Ms. Scott’s appearance through her arrest records, mug shot photographs, as well as information gathered from her prison records. In San Quentin’s Descriptive Register of Prisoners housed at the Bancroft Library at UC Berkeley, Laura Scott is described as having heavy ears, a scar near her left eyebrow, and thick lips. [There's an interesting story about that scar which I will share at a later date.] She weighed 150 lbs, was 5 foot 6 inches tall, wore size 5 shoes, had a black complexion, brown eyes, and black hair. Her 1908 Bertillon criminal card describes her as having lips that were “thick” and “protrude.” Her skin had numerous dark blotches and her build is listed as medium.

Laura was one of only a few women arrested in California in 1905. It was rare for women in that period to come into contact with the law. Therefore, in this way, Laura Scott was exceptional. In an article about female violence in pre-1910 California, historian Linda Parker writes that:

“From 1880 through 1910, 231 women (1.4%) entered San Quentin out of approximately 16,630 prisoners. Murders, assaults, and robberies represented twenty percent (forty-six inmates) of the convictions, which was less than that for male prisoners. ”

Theft was the most common reason women found themselves incarcerated in California at the turn of the century. Once again Linda Parker (1992) is instructive: “The San Quentin Prison Register from 1880-1910 showed that the women imprisoned at the facility committed grand larceny (forty-seven percent) far more often than any other crime.” In this, Laura Scott seems not to have stood out.

Laura was a “dress-maker/seamstress” with a grade school level education. Available prison records describe her education as poor or fair (depending on the year) and she seems to have attended a public school. According to the 1910 Federal Census, Laura was literate, she could read and write. It seems that she had some basic level of schooling as a child, perhaps attending one of the Freedman Bureau schools in Alabama. Her religion is listed as Protestant.

Linda Parker provides some insight into life for women in California during this period:

“Before 1910 the women of California, like people in other states, lived under state laws that favored male dominance. Many towns enacted laws prohibiting women from wearing men’s clothing even though shirts and trousers were more comfortable and practical for a number of occupations, including farm work. In a typical marriage, fathers assumed sole guardianship of all children, including their care, education, custody and services. Community property of a marriage was also controlled by the husband. He could not sell it without the wife’s consent but he could will one-half of it away. If the wife died first she had no rights to convey her share of the property. Although women paid taxes, they could not vote in California until 1911. Women accused of law violations were “arrested by men, imprisoned with men…tried in a court by men lawyers, jurors, and judges according to man-made laws.”

Laura Scott seems to have eschewed the conventions of her time. She was divorced and did not have any children. An interesting notation appears in her San Quentin records: “habits Liq. and Tobacco.” This suggests that Ms. Scott drank alcohol and smoked. These habits would certainly not have been considered ladylike. Laura Scott was ahead of her time to be sure. Some questions to leave you with: “What was Laura Scott doing with a white man from Arizona in her home at midnight?” Perhaps she was sewing him a new suit given her skills as a seamstress…

Stay tuned for the next installment of Laura Scott’s story…

It was the hat that did it…

As regular readers of this blog know, I collect prison artifacts. I mostly focus on pre-1960s items (with a particular interest in the early 20th century). A couple of weeks ago, I decided to add to my collection of original vintage mug shots; I have dozens ranging from the early 20th century through the 1970s. I won’t go into why I started collecting these photographs — that will be a story for another day.

So I came across this Bertillon criminal card for sale online. These mug shot cards were known as Bertillon cards after the French law enforcement officer, Alphonse Bertillon, who pioneered criminal identification techniques such as anthropometry (measurement).

I knew instantly that I had to have this one. The card provides some basic details (though I won’t list them all).

Criminal Name: Laura Scott
Reg No: 23187
Age: 40
Birthplace: Alabama
Height: 67.8 inches
Weight: 150
Hair: Black
Eyes: Brown
Complexion: Black
Race: Negress
Occupation: Dressmaker
Crime: Pt. Larceny & Prior
Sentence: 5 years
Measurements taken: August 8, 1905

Laura Scott’s face is mesmerizing. There is a look of defiance in her eyes. This is the look of a woman who has been through this before. And then that incredible hat…

Aren’t you curious to know Laura Scott’s story? Well I certainly was and since I am a complete nerd, I set out to learn everything that I could about this black woman who was incarcerated at the infamous San Quentin Prison in 1905.

How did Laura Scott end up on that Bertillon card? Well, an item that appeared in the August 5, 1905 edition of the Los Angeles Herald offers some initial clues:

“Laura Scott, negress, pleaded guilty yesterday to a charge of grand larceny and was sentenced to one year in San Quentin prison. The woman was accused of stealing (85?) and a gold watch and chain from Carson. ”

Over the next few weeks, I will share a story of Laura Scott with you. It’s a story that has led me to the California Archives and to Census Records from the 1800s. It’s a story cobbled together from disparate sources and is based on my original research. Laura Scott’s story has its roots in Reconstruction era Alabama, in the Black Belt and takes us all the way to California at the turn of the 20th century. Through Ms. Scott’s story, I hope to provide a portrait of what life was like for female prisoners in the late 1800s-early 1900s in the U.S. I hope that you’ll continue with me on this journey.

P.S. Reading about the history of San Quentin Prison makes me appreciate this song by Johnny Cash even more…

Cross-posted at the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls Blog

I described my initial sighting of Tiawanda Moore back in June this way:

The first thing that strikes me when I see Tiawanda Moore is that she looks so very young. The second thing is that she reminds me of my cousin Fatime. She has the same fine features and beautiful dark skin. She is slight in build and is wearing glasses. Every black person in the U.S. has a sister, friend, cousin who looks just like Tiawanda Moore.

Yesterday when I saw and spoke with Tiawanda, I observed something more – her courage and dignity. For nearly two years, this young woman has endured so much. First she was sexually molested by a police officer and then when she sought out justice for this offense, she found herself in the clutches of the State’s Attorney charged with two class 1 felonies for eavesdropping facing up to 15 years in prison. Tiawanda Moore is brave.

Yet every single media story that I have read since she was acquitted of all charges yesterday either opens with the words “former stripper” or mentions this somewhere in the article. Radley Balko picks up on this in a blog post published yesterday. He writes:

One other thing. It’s a little odd that most media accounts of this case describe Moore as a “former stripper.” It’s actually the first three words in the Sun Times story. Maybe I’m wrong, but it’s hard to envision the article starting that way if Moore were a former nanny. Or school teacher. Or bus driver. So what’s the point? Even if Moore’s sexual assault allegation was the only newsworthy part of this story, the implication is that her former job is relevant to her allegation. Is the implication that strippers probably act provocatively even when they aren’t working—-indeed, even when they aren’t strippers anymore—and thus should expect unwanted sexual advances from cops? Is it that strippers are inherently untrustworthy? That they’re more likely to make false allegations of sexual assault? (If anything, I would suspect that strippers have built up a fair amount of tolerance for unwanted advances.)

But that of course isn’t why this story is in the news. It’s in the news because Moore became frustrated in her attempt to file a complaint, and so recorded what she thought were Chicago police officers’ attempts to rebuff her, and was consequently facing a felony charge and up to 15 years in prison. The validity of the allegation that set all of that into motion isn’t really at issue. (Indeed, the resolution of Moore’s complaint is apparently “sealed.” Which is a problem in and of itself.) So even if you buy into the fairly offensive notion that Moore’s former occupation calls her harassment allegation into doubt, the “former stripper” label is completely irrelevant to whether or not she should have been arrested and charged for recording the cops.

I would submit that it is not “odd” that Ms. Moore’s employment as a stripper is always foregrounded in the media coverage. Young black women are often portrayed as sexually promiscuous. This has a longstanding history. If you recall the Duke Lacrosse case, the alleged victim was also frequently described in media accounts as a “stripper.” In the Dominique Strauss-Khan case, Nafissatou Diallo was alleged to have been a prostitute. There is an inglorious history in the press of women who bring charges of sexual assault often being painted as sexually “loose” in some way. So Mr. Balko is not wrong to assume that if Ms. Moore had been a former teacher or nanny that this would not have been the opening statement in an article covering this trial.

There is something more to the press’s fixation on the fact that Ms. Moore worked as a stripper. This description of her is offered as a kind of shorthand. As though it suggests something about her character and perhaps should lead us to question her credibility. It’s as if this is the main thing that we ought to know about who Tiawanda Moore is.

Chris Drew, who himself is facing eavesdropping charges, has been a supporter of Ms. Moore. He attended both days of the trial and was present when the jury read its verdict yesterday. He wrote the following about Tiawanda in an e-mail blast that he sent out to his supporters:

Ms. Moore is twenty years old and very much still trying to discover herself in this world. The Tribune calls her a former stripper but she is first a young woman struggling to survive in a depressed economy. She is too young to have established a career out of anything yet. She has every right to expect justice from our system and she is a brave fighter for women’s rights. She stood up to the intimidation of Chicago police to lodge her complaint of sexual abuse. Anyone who listened to the testimony Tuesday and Wednesday at her trial knows that took a very brave spirit. We should expect more from the newspaper of record in reporting behind the scenes. They should examine in depth the way Cook County State’s Attorneys Office shields police misconduct.

She fought against a culture of intimidation other women of any background might face when they try to lodge a complaint against the Chicago Police for sexual misconduct. She won putting the Cook County State’s Attorney on notice that they should not be shielding police who violate citizen’s rights with malicious prosecutions of this type. Her win is a win for all women and all citizens who expect justice from Cook County. Her attorney argued that she was being intimidated out of her right to file a complaint by police who were breaking their own rules in doing so.

I teared up when I read this mainly because it is so TRUE. But also because I felt a sense of hope to read these words coming from a man who is so very different from Tiawanda Moore. Chris Drew is an older white man, an artist. He is someone who has already lived many years and it seems that in this case it has brought him wisdom. Tiawanda Moore is young, black, and very different in many other ways from Chris. Yet he can see through those differences to simply embrace Tiawanda’s humanity. It means that we have hope for transformation. While the media continues its relentless assault on the images of young black women in the U.S., on an individual level many (including Chris Drew) resist these portrayals.

Chris offers something else in his words about Tiawanda Moore. He provides a context within which a young black woman with limited opportunities finds a way to survive. Young women do what they have to do to survive. Chris forces his reader to consider stripping as a rational form of employment and dares us to judge Ms. Moore without having lived in her shoes. He is basically saying to us: she was a stripper, so what? He also frames her as a “fighter for women’s rights.” To me, that is the proper context within which to view Tiawanda Moore. What she did in standing up to the police and the state tells us more about her resilience and character than does her employment. Most of us are not primarily defined by where we work. We define ourselves mostly in relation to who we love. Perhaps we see ourselves first as mothers, sisters, spouses or friends. We define ourselves by the struggles that we join as organizers, citizens, activists. We define ourselves differently depending on the day or the context. These things are complicated rather than being straightforward. The media shies away from the complicated preferring black and white descriptions. So I offer them an easy description of Tiawanda Moore: Ms. Moore is BRAVE. Thanks Chris for giving voice to this!

Update: Here is a recap of what happened at the trial yesterday.

This is a post by my friend and often “partner in cahoots” Melissa Spatz about the Tiawanda Moore case. Melissa is the co-founder of the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women along with me. She is also the day-to-day coordinator of the Taskforce. Melissa is a long-time organizer, a lawyer and a writer based out of Chicago. This is cross-posted at the Taskforce blog. I am proud to publish it here at Prison Culture.

On August 18, 2010, Tiawanda Moore went to the Office of Internal Affairs to file a complaint, alleging that a police officer had sexually assaulted her. Getting the runaround from the officers at Internal Affairs, and feeling threatened and intimidated, she pulled out her Blackberry to get proof that they were refusing to help her file her claim. As many of you know by now, Ms. Moore was charged with “eavesdropping” on the police, a charge that can bring up to 15 years in jail.

Today, I’m so happy to announce, she was acquitted, and her nightmare is over.

But there are lessons to be learned from this, and changes that are needed, and I think it’s important that we take the time to think about what happened here, and what it says about the need for systemic reform.

I was in court today, along with my good friend and colleague Mariame Kaba and a small group of supporters. The closing arguments we heard spoke volumes about the injustice that this young woman – and I fear, young women in general – experience at the hands of the police and the states’ attorney.

“THEY WERE STALLING, INTIMIDATING HER, BULLYING HER NOT TO MAKE A COMPLAINT.”

Ms. Moore’s attorney, Robert Johnson, spoke eloquently about her experiences of injustice. His description of what had happened to Ms. Moore, based on the testimony and the tape itself, which had been played for the jury, filled in some of the details on her harrowing experience at Internal Affairs that you may not have heard.

First, he said, when she made the appointment, she was told to bring any witnesses who could support her allegations. She brought her boyfriend, but he was immediately told to go home or go to McDonald’s to wait for her; no interview was held. The police urged her not to file a complaint, insisting that the assaulting officer was “a good guy.” On the tape, there’s a promise that what happened to her will never happen again (proving, as Robert Johnson pointed out, that they believed that she had been assaulted). There’s the insistence that instead of filing a complaint, she should “go a different route.” (On cross examination, the officer admitted, correctly, that there is no other route for victims of police sexual harassment in the system.) And there’s the fact that when she became concerned and wanted to speak with another officer, the police locked the door and told her she could not leave.

Imagine how scary this experience must have been. Imagine the power dynamics in the room, of this 19-year old young woman trying to plead her case to two police officers, and getting this kind of response.

The only conclusion you can reach is the one Robert Johnson reached:

“The plan was to kill this complaint from the very beginning…. They were stalling, intimidating her, bullying her not to make a complaint.”

HERE WE GO AGAIN, FRAMING THE VICTIM AS THE PERPETRATOR

And what did the State have to say about what happened? Brace yourself, because here’s their theory.

Tiawanda Moore, they said, was on a “fishing expedition.” They alleged that this young woman came in all the way from Indiana, not because she had been assaulted by a police officer and wanted to make a complaint. No, the real reason according to the State was that she “wanted them to say the case was going nowhere. That’s what she wanted them to say.”

What? Didn’t she say on the tape itself that she’s concerned about how many other young women have been sexually assaulted by this officer? Absolutely, said the State, and that is just proof that she was “editorializing,” by which I suppose they meant she was trying to make her case for public consumption.

If this sounds crazy to you, like the world’s gone mad, consider the State’s conclusion as to the power dynamics at play when she went to file her claim. Is it the police that are in a position of power? No.

“It is her that is in control…. You can’t push Tiawanda Moore around, she’s not going to let you.”

After all, the State’s Attorney added, “What motive do the police have to protect this officer?”

“JUST ANOTHER DAY IN INTERNAL AFFAIRS”

Now that we can breathe a huge sigh of relief that Tiawanda Moore won’t be facing jail time for this travesty, I am left with a deep fear that what she experienced may in fact be, to quote the State’s Attorney, “just another day in Internal Affairs.”

The concerns raised by groups like the ACLU, and activists like Chris Drew, over the Eavesdropping Law are important and valid. Our avenue for defense against all types of abuse of power by law enforcement must be protected. Citizens should be able to record police abuse, and to use recordings to hold the police accountable for such abuse in court. Period.

Beyond that, though, let’s not lose focus on how the system failed this young woman at every level. It is important that we remember that Tiawanda Moore’s terrible experience with the system as a young woman survivor of violence was most likely not a fluke. Instead, her experience points to what young women are up against, and the need for systemic changes.

Young women in Chicago are at risk of sexual assault by the police. Tiawanda Moore is certainly not the only young woman to allege that she has been sexually assaulted by a police officer. In Chicago, and in other cities as well, young women have come forward to say that they have been assaulted by their local police officers. Here in Chicago, there have been rallies in support of survivors of police violence, and groups such as Women’s All Points Bulletin – whose director, Crista Noel, was present in court as well to support Tiawanda Moore today – are working to draw attention to these cases, and to provide crucial support for women.

And can we really believe, as the state alleges, that Internal Affairs is deeply committed to supporting survivors of police violence? Literature from Chicago Activists Against Police Sexual Assault, a new group that is holding rallies around the issue, quotes these statistics from a 2007 study by the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic at the University of Chicago.

• The odds that a Chicago police officer charged with abuse will receive any form of meaningful discipline are 2 out of 1,000. But as the U.S. Dept. of Justice has found, only 1 in 10 citizens ever even report police abuse for fear of reprisal, and distrust of the investigatory process.
• Between 2002 and 2004, 85% of abuse complaints were dismissed without ever interviewing the officer.
• 75% of Chicago police officers with multiple charges of abuse never receive any discipline whatsoever
• Brutality complaints are 94% less likely to be found as having sufficient evidence by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) than in the nation as a whole.

Yes, it does sound like what happened to Ms. Moore was what might be expected on any typical day.

And now we can add the State’s Attorney into the mix. For months, the Taskforce has called for the State’s Attorney to drop these ridiculous charges against Tiawanda Moore. They refused. Today’s closing arguments made it clear that the State’s Attorney cannot be relied upon to protect young women from police violence. The topsy turvy world view that was presented in court today – a world in which young women supposedly have power over the police – was startling and frankly, frightening.

We all have a lot of work to do if we are going to make Chicago safer for young women. Systems change at every level is called for. What are your thoughts about what needs to be done?