'She Ain’t No Rosa Parks': The Joan Little Rape–Murder Case and Jim Crow Justice in the Post–Civil Rights South

In the early hours of an August morning in 1974, prison officials found the jailer, Clarence Alligood, slumped on a bunk in the women’s section of the Beaufort County jail in eastern North Carolina. His lifeless body bore eleven stab wounds, including one that pierced his heart. Naked from the waist down, one hand held his trousers, the other loosely gripped an ice pick. A trail of dried semen trickled down his left thigh. On the floor was a negligee; a bra hung on the cell door. The prisoner, Joan Little, was nowhere in sight. She was five foot, three inches tall, 20 years old, poor, black and in trouble. He was white, 62 years old, and at 200 pounds, nearly twice her size. On these facts, both sides would agree. Those who believed Joan Little was guilty saw a “hardened criminal with the instincts of a black widow spider,” a Jezebel who had lured the unsuspecting Alligood into her cell with promises of sex. In the moment of his climax, the wanton young woman ruthlessly stabbed the poor, defenseless man and fled from the jail. On the other side, her supporters saw a victim of racism and sexism, a vulnerable African American woman who had valiantly defended herself against one of the age-old and unforgivable crimes of white supremacy. But this was not simply a southern tale. The Joan Little case quickly became a national and international cause celebre, attracting feminists of all kinds, Black Power and traditional civil rights activists, working-class black churchwomen, and prison reformers. Joan Little remained on the lam for only a few days. After officials invoked a Reconstruction-era fugitive law that allowed anyone to shoot and kill her on sight, she turned herself in to authorities in Raleigh, the state capital. A Beaufort County grand jury wasted no time indicting her for first-degree murder. If convicted, Joan would face a mandatory death penalty in North Carolina’s gas chamber. However, a well-oiled defense fund and a broad-based “Free Joan Little” campaign led an integrated, majority-female jury to acquit her in 1975 after deliberating for just over an hour. But none of this had come easily, and without the funds and the activists’ support, Little might well have received a death sentence.