Weaponizing White Women’s Femininity: Accusations Against Black
Men

Introduction
“Racial injustice is America’s original sin and deepest silence”- Jeanne
Theoharris, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil
Rights History
According to The Sentencing Project, “African Americans are more likely than
White Americans to be arrested; once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted;
and once convicted, and they are more likely to experience lengthy prison sentences.”
White women’s femininity is weaponized by using protections set in place centuries
ago. Since the birth of this nation, White women have been protected. Starting in the
time of slavery, measures, social and legal, were put in place to protect White
womanhood. At the same time, they were lifted into a position of power over those
they were being protected from- Black men. The word of a White woman became like
a rallying call for the community, what she said was taken without question. If she
implicated a Black man of any indiscretion, his life would be forever changed. For this
study, I examined interactions between White women and their accusations against
Black men. I examined five cases that I separated into three different categories. The
first category is “Black men were blamed for a crime that they did not commit”. The
second is “White women committed a crime, but blamed a Black man”. Lastly, is
“White woman using fear and aggression against a Black man”.

Methodology

I used a snowball sampling method when selecting cases. The idea for this
project came about around the time of the Amy Cooper and Christian Cooper case.
Around that time, I also saw images of the memorial for Emmett Till which was
vandalized. While I did not use Emmett Till in this study, it was those two cases that
started me in down this road. From Till I found those in the first grouping. From the
Cooper case I eventually found the second case in group three and the case in group
two.
When following leads to cases I wanted to look at those that had the
possibility of being familiar but were not the most well-known. For example, other
cases that fit into this are the Central Park Five also known as The Exonerated,
Emmett Till, and Amanda Knox. I did not want to use those cases, not because they
are not important to know about, but because I feel as if those are more well-known. I
wanted to expose people to cases that they might not know much about but are
significant. The case of the Scottsboro Boys there was two pieces of noteworthy
legislation and George Stinney Jr. was the youngest person executed in the United
States in the 20th century. My third category looks at more recent and what I would
consider to be more well-known cases, which was done to show that it was still
happening and is still prominent. Picking who I would talk about was difficult. There
were a few cases, such as Charles Stuart and Willie Horton, that nearly made it into
the final cut for the presentation but were not included simply because they did not fit
as neatly into my three categories as I would have liked. Charles Stuart killed his

pregnant wife and shot himself and blamed a Black man- almost putting him into the
second category but missing the mark of being blamed by a White woman. Willie
Horton was used as a fear tactic in the 1988 presidential election, almost putting him
into the third category, but missing the female element in a direct way (it was more
subtle).
Case Studies
In critically examining individual cases, the theoretical frameworks I used are
Critical Race Theory and White Fragility. Critical Race Theory examines how race, a
socially constructed idea, has an impact on culture and institutions. Scholars look
historically at racism, from slavery, through the Civil Rights Movement, and to
present day. It is done to see how beliefs and practices that enable racism persist over
time and to challenge these ideas to create change. Broadly, it “emphasizes the
importance of examining and attempting to understand the sociocultural forces that
shape how we and others perceive, experience, and respond to racism” (Purdue
Writing Lab). Critical Race Theory scholars also attempt to show how racism
continues to deny constitutional freedoms. It also draws attention to those who
perpetrate and are seemingly not impacted by racial prejudice. White Fragility is the
defensiveness from White people when their ideas about race and racism are
challenged. Society is set up in such a way that White people are not often forced to
think about race and the discomfort often associated.
According to an article in the New Yorker, White people lack the “racial stamina” to
have these difficult conversations. Other White people, even when knowing the
behavior is wrong, will avoid correcting White peers in order to maintain the peace.

This results in White Fragility holding racism in place.
For the first group, I used cases that ended up in court where one or more Black
males were accused of committing a crime against a White female. The first case in this
category is that of the Scottsboro Boys: Charlie Weems, Ozie Powell, Clarence Norris,
Andrew and Leroy Wright, Olen Montgomery, Willie Roberson, Haywood Patterson,
Eugene Williams (Scottsboro Boys 2018). On March 25, 1931 in Jackson Country,
Alabama a fight broke out on a Southern Railroad freight train (Scottsboro Boys 2018).
The fight was said to have started when a young White man stepped on the hand of one
of the boys that would be later known as the Scottsboro Boys (The Scottsboro Boys
2017). The White men were taken off the train and blamed the fight on the Black teens.
At the same time, two White women, Ruby Bates and Victoria Price, were worried
about charges of prostitution. In order to save themselves, they put more blame on the
Black teens. The girls accused them of rape (Scottsboro Boys 2018). The initial trail
was in April 1931 with an all White male jury. Eight of the boys were sentenced to
death. The remaining one was thirteen-year-old Leroy Wright resulted in a hung jury,
where one juror favored life in prison. There was a mistrial and he remained in prison
until 1937 awaiting a final verdict. The International Labor Defense took the cases and
ran a national campaign to free the group. In June of the same year, the court granted a
stay of execution pending an appeal to the Alabama Supreme Court. The following
March, the Alabama Supreme Court upheld the convictions of seven and granted
Eugene Williams a new trial as he was a minor. In November 1932, the United States
Supreme Court ruled that the Scottsboro defendants had been denied the right to
counsel, a 14th Amendment violation in the case of Powell v Alabama (Scottsboro Boys

2018). There is then a second round of trials. During this set, Ruby Bates recants and
agrees to testify for the defense. Another all White jury convicted Haywood Patterson
and recommended the death penalty. Judge James Horton suspended the death penalty
and granted a new trial.
Patterson and Norris were retried, convicted, and sentenced to death in late 1933.
Samuel Leibowitz, a defense attorney arguing on behalf of the International Labor
Defense, headed to the United State Supreme Court after the Alabama Supreme Court
unanimously denied a motion for a new trial. The case of Norris v Alabama occurred
in January 1935. It ruled that the systematic exclusion of Black people on Jackson
County jury rolls denied a fair trial (Boys 2018). In early 1936 Patterson was convicted
for the fourth time and sentenced to 75 years in prison. Norris had a third trial which
resulted in a death sentence. Andrew Wright and Charlie Weems were both convicted
of rape and given long prison sentences. Powell had rape charged dropped but was
given twenty years for assaulting a deputy sheriff. Montgomery, Roberson, Williams,
and Leroy Wright all had their charges dropped and were released. In 1938, Alabama
Governor Bibb Graves commuted Norris’ sentence to life in prison and denied pardons
applications. Eventually, Weems, Andrew Wright, Norris, and Powell were released
on parole. In 1948, Patterson escaped to Michigan where the governor refused to
extradite him. Three years later he was convicted of manslaughter after a barroom
brawl and passed away the following year. In this case, there were two state Supreme
Court decisions successfully arguing that the system was perpetrating discrimination
against these teens. Norris v Alabama specifically acknowledged the racial
discrimination experienced when looking at this case through the lens of whiteness we

must look at Ruby Bates. She is one of the women who accused them of rape.
Suring the second round of trials, she knew what she did was wrong and was doing
what she could to make it right but working with the defense. Yet, due to the racism
ingrained in the system, it did not help.
The second case in this grouping is the case of George Stinney Jr. At the age of
fourteen, he was accused of killing 11 year old Betty June Binnicker and 7 year old
Mary Emma Thames in Alcolu, South Carolina (Chappell, 2014). George and his sister
were outside playing when the two girls came up to them, asking where they could find
flowers. After they did not return home, a search party was formed. During the search
he said he saw them earlier. The next morning when the girls were found in dead,
George Stinney Jr was immediately arrested and interrogated with no parent or lawyer
present (Jun. 16, 1944). The sheriff said that he confessed, but there is no
documentation. Two days later on March 26, a mob attempted to lynch him, being only
saved by the fact he was moved just prior to their arrival. The trial was a month after
the incident. He was virtually alone as no African Americans were allowed into the
court room and his court- appointed attorney was a tax lawyer who called no witnesses.
The only evidence of guilt was the word of the sheriff, as there was not even
documentation of the confession (Jun. 16, 1944). Within ten minutes, an all White jury
deliberated and found George Stinney Jr. guilty and the judge sentenced him to death.
He was executed on June 16, 1944 by electric chair in Columbia, South Carolina. He
was so small that the chair and equipment was too big for him. This case is another that
shows the flaws built into the system. The feeling of the need to protect White females,
especially children, is so great that a young Black male is nearly murdered by a lynch

mob. I hesitate to say Black boy due to historical connotations, but that is what he was.
A boy. A kid. A child who told two girls not much younger then himself where they
could find flowers.
An action that sentenced him to death. Lynch mobs existed since the time of slavery
when enslaved individuals, especially Black men, were killed for nearly any reason, if
there even was one. Lynch mobs took the law into their own hands. The victims and
the perpetrators of these mobs do have one thing in common though, never getting
their day in court. However, in this case, although it seems as is they were
unsuccessful as George was moved before they found him, they were still indeed
successful. George Stinney Jr. was still killed. An all White jury took a mere ten
minutes to sentence him to death. He was alone in the court room. The 6th Amendment
promises several things; the right to a speedy and public trial, an impartial jury, and to
obtain witnesses in your favor. The only thing that he got was a speedy trial which
resulted in a speedy death sentence.
For the second group, I examined a case in which a White woman blamed a
Black man for a crime she was later found guilty of. The case I looked at for this
category is that of Susan Smith. On October 25, 1994 Susan Smith claimed that her car,
with her two young sons, had been taken by an African American man (Susan Smith
2020). For days she pleaded on television for the save return of her children. On the
ninth day, she admitted to pushing her car into a local lake, with her boys strapped in
their car seats. When she was asked why she did it she said “I didn’t know how to tell
the people who loved Michael and Alex that they would never see them again. I didn’t
want to hurt them” (Chuck, 2015). She also said that she planned on killing herself

before the truth came out. I decided to include this case to show that in America we
have been pushed to believe that criminal equals Black man, whether we know it or
not. She could have picked any description for this imaginary car thief, or she simply
could have said that she did not see who did it, but she made the decision to tell the
police it was a Black man. By telling the police that a Black male did it, it means that a
Black male is the only suspect. Allowing there to be a legal backing to viewing all
Black men as criminals, a possible suspect. Stop and frisk laws require a stop to only
be made where there is suspicion of a crime, and a vague description of a so called
suspect does just that. A seemingly harmless description could be life ruining. Susan
Smith is a White woman who did not know the intricacy of race and the criminal
justice system. This case, as sad as it is, could have ruined more lives if an innocent
man was found guilty.
The last set of cases I looked at are a bit different than the first two. In these
White women engage with a Black man and some form of an audience, in the first a
911 operator and Twitter for the second. They are aggressive to the men while making
the audience think that these men are the ones that should be feared. The first case in
this group is between Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper, no relation. This is a case
that made national news in May 2020. Christian, a Black man, was bird watching in
Central Park. When he came across Amy and her unleashed dog, he asked her to put
the dog in a leash, per park policy (Betancourt, 2020). She became agitated and called
the police, he began recording. While on the phone with 911 she became increasingly
agitated, saying he was threatening her and the dog emphasizing that “an African
American man” was recording her. Amy Cooper was charged for falsely reporting an

incident in the 3rd degree and she was fired from her job the next day (Pereira &
Katersky, 2020). The misdemeanor charge was eventually dropped. The Assistant
District Attorney us quoted saying “We offered her, consistent with our position on
many misdemeanor cases involving a first arrest, an alternative, restorative justice
resolution” (Booker, 2021). For this case, the aggression from Amy Cooper is quite
clear to anyone who watches the video. She is yelling and nearly choking her dog. She
is yelling that she is going to call the cops. While on the phone her tone quickly
changes. She is no longer yelling in anger, but is pleading for help from non- existent
threats. Threats that she is sure to point out are from an “African American man”. It is
hard not to think about what might have happened if Christian Cooper was not
recording. Perhaps this case would be moved to the first grouping.
The second case in this group is between Kaela Carpenter and Seattle
Seahawk’s cornerback Richard Sherman. After an in-game confrontation between
Sherman and her husband, she tweeted a picture of a device used to castrate bulls and
said “I know what we do on the farm when a male can’t control his own rage.
#LuckyImNotThere #Sherman #ActLikeAnAnimalGetTreatedLike1” (Lyles, 2016). In
this case, it is easy to see the aggression from Kaela Carpenter. She publicly called for
the castration of a Black man, because of a football game. The idea that Sherman
should be feared is two parts. First is that he is unable to control his rage and is animal
like. The second is a bit more subtle with historic undertones. Castration was a tactic
used by racist mobs under Jim Crow. The hyper sexualization of Black men, leading
back to the times of slavery, was paired with the idea of protecting White women and
resulted in seeing Black men as rapists and the only way to stop them was castration.

Discussion
My intentions when starting this research was to take concepts, like Critical
Race Theory and White Fragility and see how they intersect with the idea of protecting
White women. Critical Race Theory examines the concept of race since the birth of this
nation and how it is built into all of our structures and lives. White Fragility looks
specifically at White people and their role in maintaining current ideas of race. By
looking at White women I wanted to see their impact on Black men and their influence
on the criminal justice system. My goal for those who experience this project is to
remember two things. First is that these are not new or isolated events. Although I
picked cases that are within the last 100 years, does not mean it did not happen earlier.
As mentioned before, lynch mobs existed during the time of slavery. Black men were
being castrated during the time of Jim Crow. I also do not want the limited number of
cases discussed let you believe that they are rare occurrences. The cases that I chose are
well known cases, but not the extent of them. Other cases that could have been
discussed included is that of Emmett Till, Amanda Knox, and other high-profile cases.
But for every one we know, there are those that were never reported or are lost to
history. It is our job to remember. Which lead me to my second point- to remember.
This has been going on long enough. Things need to change. People need to change.
The system needs to change. None of which can happen without White people doing
something. White people need to start holding each other accountable. It is not enough
to just be aware of what is happening, but we must do more. It is up to you to figure out
what you can do.

This project is just another step in a lifelong journey of understanding.
Discussions of race will never end. After the basics and opening yourself up to these
discussions, we must continue to push deeper and continue the uncomfortable
conversations. That is exactly what this study aimed to do, look at the history we aim
to forget, but we must no forget. We have to make sure that those impacted by racist
structures are not forgotten because forgetting goes hand in hand with being blind to
what is happening now. How can we acknowledge the present without understanding
the past? The next step is to spread information. After getting to a place of
understanding, and being able to admit you do not know it all but are still learning, you
can begin to help other on their understanding of race.
For centuries the word of White women has had tremendous power when it
comes to impacting the lives of Black men. One mere accusation can ruin lives and
reputations. It is time to shift the focus, to put pressure on the oppressors to create a
more truthful country.

Citations
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Betancourt, D. (2020, June 23). Christian Cooper hopes America can change. Because
he's not going to. The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/artsentertainment/2020/06/23/christian-cooper-central-park-birder-comics/.
Booker, B. (2021, February 16). Amy Cooper, White Woman Who Called Police On
Black Bird- Watcher, Has Charge Dismissed. NPR.
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Chappell, B. (2014, December 18). S.C. Judge Says 1944 Execution Of 14-Year-Old
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Encyclopedia Britannica, inc. (2021, April 2). Critical race theory. Encyclopedia
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Guardian News and Media. (2016, November 10). Richard Sherman: castration tweet
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https://www.sbnation.com/2016/11/8/13565128/kaela-carpenter-richard-shermancomments.

Pereira, I., & Katersky, A. (2020, July 6). Amy Cooper charged in Central Park false
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