Sexual Violence, Black Agency, and Anticommunism: The Black and the Red Confront Slavery's Afterlife

In March 1931, nine Black teenagers were accused of raping two white women aboard a train in Alabama; the white women, charged with “vagrancy and illegal sexual activity” falsely accused the youth of rape. The Communist-led International Labor Defense took the case all the way to the US Supreme Court, which threw out the convictions—though, the nine were re-indicted and tried again and the case(s) dragged on for 20 years.

In May 1951, Willie McGee, a Mississippi Black World War II veteran was killed via the electric chair—a legal lynching. He was convicted of raping a white lover—after being held without counsel for a month; after a forced confession, likely beaten out of him; and after two earlier overturned convictions. The Communist-led Civil Rights Congress (CRC) brought national and international attention to his defense, as did the Daily Worker and Pual Robeson’s Freedom.

In July 1975, JoAnne Little, a North Carolina Black woman, was facing the death penalty for killing a white male prison guard; he entered her jail cell intending to rape her. Eventually, she became the first Black woman in US history to be acquitted (of killing her white attacker) by arguing that she “used lethal force in self-defense against rape.” The Communist-initiated National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (NAARPR) was instrumental in her defense.

These cases—like many others—highlight converging themes; the devaluation of Black lives, the denial of Black agency, and the use of anticommunism to delegitimize demands for racial equality. However, they also highlight how Black and Red activists defiantly converged to confront the remnants of slavery’s afterlife in dynamic and consistent ways throughout the Long Civil Rights Movement of the 20th century.