Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape (29 page)

Q.-How many of them? A.-There were three.

Q.-One right af ter the other? A.-Yes, sir.

Q.-Threw you down on the ground? A.-Yes, sir, they throwed me down.

Q.-Do you know who the men were who ravished you?

A.-Yes, sir, I can tell who the men were; there was Ches McCollum, Tom McCollum, and this big Jim Harper . . .

ELLEN PARTON of Meridian, Mississippi: . . . Wednesday night was the last night they came to my house . . . they came on Mon day, Tuesday and Wednesday; on Monday night they said they came to do us no harm; on Tuesday night they said they came for the arms; I told them there was none, and they said they would take my word for it; on Wednesday night they came and broke open the wardrobe and trunks, and committed rape upon me; there was eight

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I ,

f.I'..· \·

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of them in the house; I do not know how many there were outside; they were white men . . . I called upon Mr. Mike Slamon, who was one of the crowd, for protection . . . Mr. Slamon had an oil-cloth and put it before his face, trying to conceal himself, and the man that had hold of me told me not to call Mr. Slamon's name any more; he then took me in the dining room, and told me I had to do just what he said; I told him I could do nothing of the sort; that was not my way, and he replied, "by God, you have got to," and then threw me down . . . he had a black velvet cap on; af ter he got through with me he came through the house and said he was af ter the Union Leagues; I yielded to him because he had a pistol drawn; when he took me down he hurt me . . . I yielded to him on that account; he . . . hurt me with his pistol . . .

HANNAH TUTSON of Clay County, Florida, was visited by Klans men who wanted her land: When they came to my house that night the dog barked twice . . . I got up and went out of doors . . . but I could see nothing; I went back into the house, and just as I got into bed five men bulged right against the door, and it fell right in the middle of the floor, and they fell down. George McRae was the first to get up. . . . He said, "Come in, True-Klux." I started to scream, and George McRae catched me right by the throat and choked me.

. . . Then there were
so
many hold of me that they got me out of doors. Af ter they got me out, I looked and I saw Jim Phillips, George

McRae, and Henry Baxter . . . . They took and carried me to a pine, just as large as I could get my arms around, and then they tied my hands there. They pulled off all my linen, tore it up so that I did not have a piece of rag on me as big as my hand. They tied me, and I said, "Men, what are you going to do with me?" They said, "God damn you, we will show you; you are living on another man's premises." I said, "No; I am living on my own premises; I gave
$i
50
for it and Captain Buddington and Mr. Mundy told me to stay here." They . . . whipped me for a while. . . . George McRae would act scandalously and ridiculously toward me and treat me shamefully. . . . He would get his knees between my legs and say, "God damn you, open your legs." I tell you men, he did act ridicu lously and shamefully, that same George McRae. He sat down there and said, "Old lady, if you don't let me have to do with you, I will kill you." . . . They whipped me . . . and got liquor of some kind and poured it on my head, and I smelled it for three weeks, so that it made me sick. . . .

Q.-How many crops had you made? A.-Two crops. . . .

RIOTS, POGROMS AND REVOLUTIONS
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Q.-You spoke about some of them "wanting to do with you," as you expressed
it.

A.-Yes, sir.

Q.-What one was that? A-George McRae.

Q.-Did you give way to him?

A.-No, sir; George McRae acted so bad, and I was stark naked. I tell you men, he pulled my womb down so that sometimes now I can hardly walk.

Gerda Lerner, who unearthed and published much of the testimony quoted above in her documentary history,
Black
Women in White America, makes the point that "there are no records of the rape and violation of white women whose husbands or male relatives were associa ted with the Republican cause. Such practices were confined to black women." Since she called atten tion to an omission for the purpose of making a case for the
special
political abuse of black women through sexual means, and since this line of reasoning comes perilously close to the old leftist position that "when a black woman is raped the crime is political, but when a white woman is raped the charge is hysterical" (see Chapter 7, "A Question of Race") , I feel I must try to set the record straight.

Under the guise of punishing immorality, Klansmen often whipped white women they accused of adultery, ". . . and some times faithful wives who wouldn't come across to a Kluxer," according to one historian of Klan activity. The celebrated trial in
i92
5 of D. C. Stephenson, Grand Dragon of the Klan in Indiana, for the rape and murder of a white woman-Stephenson was actually convicted-is another example of the use of Klan power to create sexual terror irrespective of race. Further, William M. Kunstler speculated at length on the role played by the New Jersey Klan in The Minister and the Choir Singer, his account of the Hall Mills adultery and murder case.

No one would want to deny that blacks were the special target of the Klan, and that black women suffered special abuse because they were women, but rather than try·to separate out white women and claim they got off scot-free, a higher political understanding is gained by recognizing that sexual intimidation knows no racial distinctions, and that the sexual oppression of white women and black women is commonly shared.

MoB VIOLENCE AGAINST WmTEs: THE CoNGO

When Congolese forces began celebrating independence in July, 196o, by raping Belgian women, including nuns, and a few scattered accounts appeared in the papers, my attitude was one of disbelief. I chalked up the stories to fraudulent rumors, basically racist, designed
to
embarrass the cause of Patrice Lumumba, hero and martyr of Congo self-determination. I was not alone in my skepticism. The entire world press tended to divide along political lines. Pro-Lumumba papers in England, such as the well-bred Manchester Guardian, ignored the rape stories altogether, while papers that took a jaundiced view of African nationalism, such as the sensationalist
Daily
Mail and Daily Express, reported the rapes with gusto. In this country the small, vociferous lef t-wing press considered the rapes to be vicious, deliberate lies; while to William Buckley's conservative National Review, which supported seces sionist Katanga, the rapes were proof of "what the black savages are doing." The battle lines of truth were drawn, as they frequently are, on the bodies of women.

Fif teen years have passed since those tragic early days of the Congo's struggle for independence, and my views remain un changed as far as Lumumba is concerned. I still believe he was the hope of the Congo. But a woman's politik operates independent of traditional male forces of lef t and right, as everything in this book should make clear. There was rape in the Congo, a lot of it, Lumumba's denials notwithstanding. And it was not a plot of the CIA or Belgian mining interests, nor was it an hysterical fantasy of sex-starved nuns.

To understand the politics of rape in the Congo, one needs to know a little history. The Force Publique was created
by
King Leopold II at the close of the nineteenth century and used by the Belgian colonialists to enforce their rule-a rule unmatched in brutality by other colonial powers. The Force was a native army, illiterate and poorly paid, black myrmidons who did the bidding of an elite corps of European officers. To supplement their wages, the black troops were allowed to live off the land. One penetrating observer, the British anticolonialist E. D. Morel, wrote in 1909, "Wherever its operations have ranged, native livestock has almost totally disappeared; native preventive measures against the spread

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of venereal disease have been impossible of application. From far and wide . . . women have been raided in enormous numbers to satisfy its lusts. . . .
It
has been admitted in one official document that 'a veritable slave trade in women' was carried out by them."

In
i960
the Force Publique became a rogue elephant-loyal neither to Lumumba, Kasavubu, nor to the hated, departing Bel gians, who knew they had created an irresponsible monster. A few days af ter the formal ceremonies of independence, the Force mutinied at the Thysville barracks. The mutiny spread quickly to other cities. Helen Kitchen, editor in chief of Africa Report, ob served: "The attacks on European women, many in the Congo believe, were a product of heavy drinking and a gesture of revenge for humiliations suffered in the past. But it probably should also be taken into account that some politicians had led the Congolese people to believe that independence would deliver to them not only jobs, the cars, and the government houses heretofore enjoyed by the Belgians but also their personal property. And to many Congolese soldiers, a woman is still regarded as 'property.' "

Young King Baudouin set up a commission in Brussels to document accounts of rape, and a white paper, "Congo July
i96o:
Evidence," was published that year as a Belgian government propa ganda pamphlet.
It
is a meticulous document in many respects. Dates and hours of the rapes are recorded. Women's names are conspicuously deleted. All told, the Belgian white paper reported 794 instances of rape of European nationals in a ten-day period from July 5 to July i4, with individual women reporting as many as twenty violations in a single night. Some excerpts:

KISANTU,
July 5, i96o: Mrs. **** was in her home with her mother and four children. Towards
i6oo
hours a number of native soldiers sequestered her in a bedroom, and four of them raped her in turn. Between
19()0
and
2000
hours,
12
more soldiers and a gen darme arrived. After pushing her husband and children outside,
12
of these men raped her in the same room. Mrs. **** was therefore raped
i6
times.

BANZA-BOMA, July 5, 196o: Mrs. **** together with a smaU chi1d stated that she was two months' pregnant when soldiers took her onto a verandah and four of them raped her in tum.

MATADI: On July 8, towards
1100
hours,
12
native policemen arrived in Matadi and took away the fit men at gunpoint. Mrs. **** sought refuge in a house with four women and some children. The

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AGAINST
OUR WILL

native policemen returned to loot the houses. . . . One of the policemen entered the room where the women and children were. He took away at gunpoint a girl aged 14. From the cries and moans of the child, Mrs. **** realized the policeman was raping her. Then Mrs. **** was herself raped. . . . Mrs. **** [later] perceived traces of blood which convinced her that the little girl had indeed been raped . . .