A COMPARISON OF:

- It was like All of Us had been raped: Betty Jean Owens

- My Story/ We Fight For the Right to Vote: Rosa Parks

- Give Light and the People Will Find Away: Ella Baker

- The Problem that had no name: Betty Friedan

(For Prof. Jeanne Theoharis –History 43.14)

“It was like All of Us had been raped- Betty Jean Owens a catalyst against sexual violence in America

A thorough knowledge of American history brings enlightenment to the struggle of African American women to have their bodies, be termed as their own and not for these women to be characterized as beasts for the sexual gratification of white males or any males. Betty Jean Owens (1959) was a young black college woman who was viciously raped repeatedly by four white males at gun point whilst her female friend had escaped and her male friends were allowed to leave. The men that were allowed to leave reported the incident to the local authorities and were involved in a chase to apprehend Owens’s rapist. After the apprehension of the four white males, they gleefully admitted to the crime. Ms. Owens pressed charges, and the men were trialed and found guilty but were saved from the death sentence. The Owens case is not an isolated incident for prior to her case they were hundreds of black women that were brutally raped and beaten but the culprits were never charged, in fact Lisa Bramlet’s is said to have borne twenty three children, twenty of which were due to rape during slavery. Hamer (the grand daughter of Lisa Bramlet) had grown up with the idea of, “the clear understanding that a black woman’s body was never her own” and her 1963 beating by Winona Police and inmates clearly represents this along with her forced hysterectomy.

Rape (a remnant of slavery and Jim Crow Era) was thus a tool to maintain the psychological and physical