Anybody who saw her could tell she'd been dragged through hell and back. Even from the balcony I couldn't miss the tremble in every limb as she approached the witness stand. When she opened her mouth to state her name for the record, the cadence of her voice carried an unmistakably profound sense of pain and fear. I wanted so badly to hold her shaking hands in mine and tell her she was safe now, that what happened wasn't her fault, that justice would prevail in the face of institutionalized white supremacy.
I have never felt at the same time such intense pride and acute fury as I did during the cross examination of Betty Jean Owens. She remained unbelievably composed under circumstances that would have driven even the most serene women I know into complete hysteria. The questions posed by the defense counsel were illogical at best and unapologetically malicious at worst. These white men are so deluded by their own sense of self-importance that the notion of a nigger woman wanting nothing to do with them is inconceivable.
"Didn't you derive any pleasure from that? Didn't you?" I wanted to reach my bony black fingers into the mouth that spoke these disgusting words and rip Hopkins' tongue from his mouth so as to eliminate the prospect of him ever again uttering such a distasteful sentiment.
What exactly is "that" from which she would have derived pleasure? From being forced at gunpoint to allow these animals entry into her beautiful, black temple of a body? From having a knife held to her throat as she was mercilessly ravaged by one pathetic excuse for a man after another? From being slapped and pushed? Used and discarded as if she were a piece of lifeless flesh rather than a human being?
Never have I realized the extent and depth of racial animosity in the United States as I have in this courtroom today. I cannot imagine the riots that would follow this attempt to protect the interests of self-described assailants had they been negro men. White southerners would burn America as we know it into the ground, which, now that I think about it, may not be such a bad thing.
Forgotten Gospels
ReplyDeleteSo what do we do?
Our women are violated over and again,
And who hurts most?
The Negro community or the women it fails?
Should each scarred woman jump with joy that those foul men will watch a cell for the rest of their lives?
Should they scream until their throats splinter in agony because they aren’t human enough in the white world for death to be their just payment?
What do they do?
Sit-ins, boycotts, and protests all seem well.
The silk lining of his pockets will never know a blow as strong as the one to her face.
The signs taken up could never cover up the feeling of failure.
Men failing to protect women.
Women wondering if they had failed themselves by assuming they needed to be protected.
We say we feel her pain, that we cry her tears, that “it was like all of us had been raped.”
But we weren’t.
We don’t have her bruises, we won’t have her nightmares, we are not her.
This community places shattered vases on pedestals.
“Look at what you’ve done. Isn’t this horrible. I’m so upset.”
And so is she. So is every single Negro woman told they aren’t a woman and treated as such.
Remember that our sadness and anger should never overstep the boundaries of a woman abused.
She can be a symbol but she is first and foremost a woman.
A Negro woman.
She has enough people believing that isn’t enough.
Do not discard the soul to accentuate the injured body.