June 26, 2025 • 23 mins
In this special bonus episode of The Unwanted Sorority, Dr. Leatra Tate traces the powerful intersection of reproductive justice and the fight to end sexual violence—both rooted in the voices, bodies, and truths of Black women.
From the haunting legacy of the Mothers of Gynecology, to the groundbreaking bravery of the first survivors to testify before Congress, to the present-day grief surrounding Adriana Smith’s pregnancy, this episode holds space for the pain, the power, and the ongoing struggle for autonomy, dignity, and justice.
It is a tribute to those who spoke when it was dangerous to speak—and a call to continue telling the truth, even now.
Resources & Mentions
- RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network) – 24/7 support at 800-656-HOPE
- National Sexual Violence Resource Center
- Sisters of the Yam: Black Women and Self-Recovery by bell hooks
- Know My Name by Chanel Miller
- AJC Article on the 1959 Betty Jean Owens Case
Let’s Stay Connected
Share your reflections, tag us, and spread the word on all platforms: @theunwantedsorority
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
In the wise words Queen Mother Beyonce ages almos Carter.
America has a problem, but don't get it twisted. This
problem is older than the United States inception itself. It's
the non viable fetus in the womb of our nation,
unable to survive when we remove white supremacy and patriarchy,
and yet for some reason, we're still being forced to
(00:23):
carry it to turn. The problem that I'm referring to
is racism and misogyny. You can add in imperialism and
classism and all of that. It's the brand that's driven
by an obsession to control black women's bodies in this country.
Who we are, who can touch us, and what we
do with our bodies. That control includes everything from the
stereotypical perceptions of what we do with our bodies and
(00:46):
the actualized legal shackles that are placed on our bodies.
We're painted as dangerous yet disposable, or our pain is
completely ignored, overridden by generalizations and scripts that don't match
our liver realities. But today's Juneteenth, it's a celebration of
our history in this country, a day to rejoice for
(01:06):
black freedom and liberation, and a day to acknowledge a
living proof that our stories have always been at the
forefront for justice inequality. In this episode, I'm going to
paint a picture of how far we've come and how
far we still have to go. Welcome to the Unwanted Sorority,
a podcast and safe haven where black women, fem's, and
gender expansive folks speaks our truths about our experiences with
(01:29):
sexual violence, healing, and their sisterhood that formed. When we
name what tried to break us, sexual violence in what
is now the United States traces its roots back to
the very moment Christopher, yes Christopher Columbus, not the Christopher
we recognize Christopher Wallace set foot in the Caribbean. He
(01:52):
and subsequent colonizers who followed him didn't just claim land,
they claimed bodies. They treated land and flesh for profit.
Indigenous women, fems, and gender diverse people were sold into
a human sex trafficking system. Many survivors were as young
as nine or ten years old. Shout out to Chillane
University's All In Program. They are a holistic campus sexual
(02:14):
violence education program that have a robust history of sexual violence,
but they note a chilling fact in colonial common law.
Rape at the time was defined as quote carnal knowledge
of a woman ten years or older, forcibly and against
her will end quote. Notice what's missing here the rape
(02:36):
of men, what we would now define a statutory rape
of girls under ten, and even the rape of black women.
Because black women at the time weren't considered women, they
were property. Their rape produced more property children who belonged
to enslavers. That's how the law was rigged. It effectively
endorsed rape's role in slavery's profitability. This dispossession and disembodied
(03:00):
and of black women's at the stage for centuries of trauma.
It carried on through the eighteen hundreds in the United
States with a Transatlantic slave trade, which saw nearly thirteen
million African people kidnapped, forced onto European and American ships,
and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused,
and forever separated from the home, families, ancestors, and cultures.
(03:22):
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, so when we talk
about our current rape culture, when we unpack the intersections
of sexual violence and reproductive justice, we have to remember
these roots. We stand on the shoulders of ancestors whose
bodies were battlegrounds, which brings us to three names that
I want to lift up as the og founders of
(03:43):
the Unwanted Sorority, Anarca, Betsy, and Lucy. These three women
were among the original trailblazers of reproductive justice, though you
may not have ever heard their names in a standard
history class. Anarca, Betsy, and Lucy were enslaved on different
plantations near Montgomery, Alabama, in the mid eighteen hundreds. A
(04:06):
function of their living conditions, each woman developed vesico vaginal visculas,
which are tears between the bladder and vagina and or
rectum caused by traumatic childbirth. This condition was excruciatingly painful
and stigmatizing. Their symptoms from this condition, uncontrollable leakage of
urine and feces meant they were kept isolated on their plantations,
(04:29):
seen as broken by those who held them captive, and
because enslavers consider them tools not people, no meaningful medical
care existed for them in Slavers, desperate to get these
women back to their forced slab leased them quote unquote
to a man named doctor J. Marion Sims for ongoing
treatment for their condition. Statues of Sims could at one
(04:52):
point be spotted across the country, from Central Park in
New York City, which removed the statue in twenty eighteen,
to Montgomery, Alabama, where it still sits on the Capitol
lawn to this day. They served as icons of a
quote unquote medical genius, except in my opinion, he was
a grifter who performed up to thirty surgeries on anarca
alone without anesthesia within a three and a half year
(05:15):
period because he believed black women felt less pain. And
when I say he was a grifter, I mean it.
Although he was a doctor, he never specialized in gynecology.
In fact, he was known to have an aversion to
women's health. He had done everything from dentistry to pediatrics
to general surgery, but he fled South Carolina and moved
to Alabama after two of his patients died and for
(05:37):
some reason, he believed he could cure women suffering from
this disorder within six months. Delusion de Lulu Anarca, Betsy,
and Lucy endured excruciating experiments at the hands of Sins.
They were also forced to serve as surgery technicians, assisting
Sims and the procedures he conducted on one another. As
(05:59):
doctor Veronica Pimental notes in her write up honoring these
women for the twenty twenty one American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists. Quote despite the dehumanizing treatment they endured, they
were complex women and mothers who were knowledgeable and skillful.
They served as Sims surgical nurses and learned to heal
themselves in each other from the assault their bodies endured
(06:22):
from both the surgical experimentation and the reproductive enforced manual
work they performed end quote. When he published his findings,
he never even showed their phrases in his papers. He
only showed photos of white nurses performing surgeries on white patients.
He conveniently excluded Anarca, Betsy, Lucy, and the nine other
(06:43):
unnamed black women he actually conducted his early experiments on
from those photos. History amended courtesy of white supremacy. In fact,
we only know the names of Anarca, Betsy, and Lucy
because he included them in the writings of his research.
In truth, Sims exploited black women's suffering for fame and
money while black women suffered in barbaric conditions. Two centuries later,
(07:07):
the more up campus an organization committed to finding creative
ways to honor the voiceless, the minimized, and the ignored.
They've erected a statue in Montgomery, just steps away from
where Sims conducted these experiments, honoring anarca, Betsy and Lucy,
called the Mothers of Gynecology. Those statues stand not just
as homage, but as a reckoning. As we celebrate Juneteenth,
(07:30):
we must also honor these fore mothers who survived, and,
in surviving, set the stage for reproductive justice, a fight
we're still reckoning with today. In eighteen sixty one, the
Civil War erupted. That same year, Lincoln's Labor Code finally
put rape protections on paper for Southern Black women, but
(07:51):
in reality, legal protections meant very little if you were black.
Legal protections meant very little if you were a woman.
Women who try to file rape charges were often faced
with all white, all male jurors who effectively saw their
testimony as worthless. Interestingly enough, history textbooks often claimed the
Civil War as an anomaly when it comes to sexual violence.
(08:15):
They believe that that's the only war that saw no
widespread sexual violence or rape as strategic components of war.
And I mean, I feel like we all know better
that's revision, is history nonsense, And that's not even speaking
about global conflicts weaponizing sexual violence today. In actuality, black
women jured assaults from both Confederate and Union soldiers, who
(08:37):
often used it as a power play against the Confederate soldiers.
Why has sexual violence in wars and conflicts orically and
contemporarily been ignored racism and misogyny? And yet black women
did not vanish from the fight. Their resilience would lead
to one of history's most pivotal moments. Less than a
year after the date that we recognize as junenteenth, General
(08:58):
Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to inform all the
enslaved people that they were free May first through the third.
In eighteen sixty six, Memphis, Tennessee, a white police officer
attempts to arrest a black veteran. Black neighbors, many of
whom are Union soldiers and veterans, gathered to defend him,
(09:19):
and tensions explode. White mobs, including local policemen and firemen,
reigned terror on South Memphis. Houses are burned, churches are torched,
schools are destroyed. Forty six black residents are killed, and
two hundred and eighty five are wounded. At least five
rapes occurred that were reported. At least these women would
(09:40):
become the first known women to testify to Congress about
sexual violence. Let me introduce you to these founders of
the Unwanted Sorority. First, we have Francis Thompson. Frances was
(10:01):
about twenty six years old at the time, born into
slavery around eighteen forty. She was a self identified quote
unquote cripple who used crutches to get around on account
of which she said was cancer in her foot. After
most of her enslavers died during the Civil War, Francis
began living as a free woman and made a living
(10:21):
sewing and washing clothes. Francis lived with her sixteen year
old housemate, Lucy Smith, who I'll tell you about in
a moment. On the night of May first, a group
of seven white men, including two policemen, busted into their home.
They forced Frances and Lucy to cook them suffer, stole
their money, and then demanded sex. When they refused, the
men beat and raped both of them. Francis later said
(10:44):
that Lucy was choked so badly she couldn't speak for
two weeks, and she was bed ridden for a fortnight.
On June first, eighteen sixty six, Francis stood before a
congressional committee where she testified quote, then men said we you,
but we told him we was not that kind of woman.
They said. It didn't make no damn bit of difference.
(11:06):
At sixteen, Lucy Smith was just a teenager, probably still
learning a lot about life and living under Francis's roof.
At the time of the invasion, Lucy's voice was gone
for days, her body was so weak, But by June
she also testified and was calm in her resolve, saying, quote,
they've done me wrong. Lucy made history as the youngest
(11:29):
testifier for the hearing on the rapes, and Francis made
history of her own as well. After a tragic incident,
which occurred ten years after she gave her congressional testimony.
Soon after the hearing, Francis went back to her normal life, sewing,
doing laundry, and taking contract work as a house servant.
Despite small altercations that she had previously had with the police,
(11:51):
she would always pay her fines and then she was released.
Francis was targeted by a neighbor one day who told
the Memphis Police Department that frances was not a woman
at all and that she was a quote man in disguise.
Despite France's having lived her entire life as a woman,
even while enslaved by the Wallace family during her childhood,
she was permitted to wear feminine clothes. The situation violated
(12:14):
the Memphis Public Decency Law, which went into effect shortly
before the Civil War started, that criminalized what they called
gross dressing. After a doctor confirmed that Francis was assigned
veil at birth. After a likely traumatic medical evaluation in
her cell at the police department, Francis was fining the
maximum amount of fifty dollars, which is around fourteen hundred
(12:36):
dollars today. When she couldn't pay, she was sentenced to
one hundred days on the chain gang, which didn't last long.
She was subjected to wild crowds that would come to
see her, make rude comments and just spectate. She was
later forced to spend the remainder of her sentence at
the police station. Tragically, she died shortly after her release.
(13:00):
Although the end of Francis's life is tragic, we lift
her up as a founder of the Unwanted's wordy because
her bravery for coming forward for this testimony despite all
that was at stake. Her care for community is central
to how we miss all remember to show up for
one another. And there's just something extra special about giving
Francis a shout out on Juneteenth and during Pride Month.
(13:25):
The next founder I'd like to introduce you to from
the Memphis Massacre is Rebecca Ann Bloom. Rebecca lived in
South Memphis with her husband, Peter. She was actually the
first of the five women to testify on May twelfth,
eighteen sixty six, just nine days after the violence ended.
On the night of May first, five white men stormed
(13:45):
into her home, forced Peter out, and held a knife
to Rebecca's throat. Her testimony states that they told her
husband to give them twenty five dollars or they'd take
him as a prisoner. He didn't have the money at
the time, so we went to go raize it within
the community. During that time that he was gone, she
was left alone with those men in her house. One
man held her down, knife to her throat, and he
(14:08):
raped her. Her testimony described the horrors of the night
as she exemplified unimaginable strength doing this so soon after
her attack. Next is Lucy Tibbs. Lucy was twenty four
and six months pregnant with her third child when a
gang of white men broke into her home on May second,
eighteen sixty six. Her brother, a Union Army veteran, kept
(14:33):
money at her house while he was away. Those same
men stole his savings, tied Lucy to her bed, and
one raped her repeatedly while her two small children huddled
in another room. Lucy told the committee, quote, I had
to give up to them. They said they'd kill me
if I did not. They put me on the bed.
They were plundering my house while it happened. The brutality
(14:57):
was unspeakable, Yet Lucy spoke on May thirtieth. She told
Congress everything, even identifying one assailant by name, risking her
safety to expose the atrocity. One simple line from her
testimony haunts me. Quote They'd done a very bad act.
That simple line and response to a likely traumatizing line
(15:18):
of questioning in the courtroom became her quiet but mighty
act of resistance. And finally, there's Harriet Armor, a married
woman whose rape took place in broad daylight on May second.
The two men busted into her cabin, one of whom
she knew as mister Dunn. They raped her twice, ignoring
her tears and pleased for them to stop. On May
(15:41):
thirty first, eighteen sixty six, Harriet told the Congressional Committee,
quote Dunn rushed into the small room and did that
bowl act end quote. That day, she named her attacker
in a public forum, an incredible act of bravery in
a city where police were part of the mob. Harriet's
testimony and those of the other fort made the Memphis
(16:02):
massacre impossible to ignore. And yet, and despite their testimonies,
not a single rapist from those three days was ever prosecuted.
Law enforcement, whether they were drunk or complicit, protected the mob,
so no one was held accountable for the murders or
community destruction either. Investigations from the Freedmen's Bureau in Congress
(16:25):
thoroughly documented these horrors, but white supremacist courts refused to
hold the perpetrators accountable. These women's courage, however, became a
legacy for future generations. Their names echo in our work,
in our healing, and in our sisterhood. Today, you may
(16:48):
be asking why or how could these women risk everything,
Their names, reputations, their safety to bear witness. The answer
is simple, because some of us are brave and I
want to be Bravery does not look one way. When
I talk about bravery, I don't mean it in the
sense of you have to name your perpetrators, you have
(17:08):
to go through a legal system where you have to
even report about your sexual violence experience. When I talk
about bravery, I mean it in the sense of the
book quote, all the women are white, all the blacks
are men, but some of us are brave. End quote.
It's a book that's edited by Gloria T. Hole, Patricia
(17:31):
Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith that highlights how black feminists
articulate this unique position for black women throughout history. For example,
in nineteen seventy seven, the Gambahi River Collective put it
this way, quote, we are all damaged people merely by
virtue of being Black women. We are dispossessed psychologically and
(17:52):
on every other level, and yet we feel the need
to struggle to change our condition and the condition of
all black women. These Memphis founders exemplify that sentiment. To me.
They didn't testify for pity. They may not have even
testified for justice. They testified to reclaim their humanity. They said,
(18:13):
if the laws won't protect me, we'll protect ourselves with
the truth. Their witness paved the way for future movements,
including hashtag me too, hashtags, Say her Name, Restorative Justice
circles in our very own space here with the Unwonted
Sorority again. Juneteenth is our celebration of Black liberation, but
today liberation means dismantling all those forms of violence that
(18:36):
are against us, which brings us to twenty twenty five. Atlanta,
Georgia Adriana Smith a thirty year old nurse and mother.
In February, she began suffering from excruciating headaches. After going
to the hospital, she gets sent home with migraine meds,
but returns the next day struggling to breathe and gurgling
in her sleep, according to her boyfriend, after finally getting
(18:59):
CT scanned. During that second visit, doctors found blood clots
in her brain. By morning, Adriana is declared brain dead,
but Adriana was nine weeks pregnant. George's Heartbeat Bill, also
known as the Life Act, bans nearly all abortions after
six weeks, so Imri University Hospital decides that they must
(19:20):
keep her body on life support until the fetus can
survive outside of the womb. Her family, like anyone seeking
medical care, expects compassion and comfort and for the family
to be at the forefront of medical decision making. Instead,
they're given no choice. They're simply notified of what Emeri
University Hospital has chosen to do for what they consider
(19:41):
compliance with the law. Adriana's mother, April Newkirk, noted that
her family's devastated, saying, quote, we weren't even given the
option to remove life support, and she clarifies that it's
not that they would choose to go that route, effectively
removing all chance of the fetus' survival, but the fact
that they weren't given the option has haunted them. This
(20:03):
echoes another case from Texas in twenty fourteen, Marlee Munos.
She was also brain dead and fourteen weeks pregnant. She
was kept on ventilation until the family sued and won.
Marlsee's baby was very unlikely to survive outside of the
loom due to complications of growing inside a body that
was no longer alive, and they're actually unsure of what
(20:25):
the status of Adriana's baby will be once it reaches
that thirty two week point. But we're seeing in real
time another example of medical experimentation due to legal restrictions
on women's bodies. And I don't know about you, but
enough is enough. Adriano's ordeal shows how heartbeat laws can
override medical ethics, personal dignity, and family wishes. And who
(20:48):
bears the brunt Black women, who already face a maternal
mortality rate of fifty point three per one hundred thousand
births compared to fourteen point five for white women according
to the poly Center from Maternal Mental Health. That's three
times higher. Decades of structural and systemic racism, misogyny, medical neglect,
(21:11):
and legal coercion converge to put us in jeopardy. So
when the state uses Adriana's body is a political pawn,
it's not just a single story. It's a continuation of
centuries long oppression. In twenty twenty five, our bodies remain
battleground picture research led by Black women for Black women,
(21:34):
Research that builds trust, not mistrust. Clinics where your insurance status,
your zip code, or your race doesn't determine your worth,
community and institutional supports that don't whitewash or exclude our
experiences in terms of survivors, resources and support on the unwanted. Already,
we imagine a future where black women, fem's, and gender
(21:55):
expansive folks have full bodily autonomy, where our health choices
and fates aren't decided by politicians, judges, or doctors. And
we're talking with guests about that future, how they're building
it in their everyday lives, and what sisterhood and collaboration
looks like to work towards that collectivision. These futures start
in community gatherings, community funding, mutual aid, and policy advocacy
(22:18):
to overturn some of those cruel laws, and healing circles
where survivors find each other and connect, just like this one.
So on this show, we're mapping a road towards liberation
with our own hands. In this episode, we've traveled from
colonial violence to post Civil war rebellions, from Anarcus suffering
to Adriana Smith's modern fight. We've covered our founders Anarca, Betsy,
(22:44):
Lucy Francis, Lucy Smith, Rebecca, Lucy Tibbs, and Harriet and
tied their legacies to today's fight for bodily autonomy, medical justice,
and sexual violence freedom. With our contemporary founder Adriana even
glimpsed at afrofutures where black women lead in healing and today,
on Juneteenth, twenty twenty five, we celebrate emancipation not just
(23:09):
from our enslavement in this country, but from silence, shame,
and state control over our bodies
In the wise words Queen Mother Beyonce ages almos Carter.
America has a problem, but don't get it twisted. This
problem is older than the United States inception itself. It's
the non viable fetus in the womb of our nation,
unable to survive when we remove white supremacy and patriarchy,
and yet for some reason, we're still being forced to
(00:23):
carry it to turn. The problem that I'm referring to
is racism and misogyny. You can add in imperialism and
classism and all of that. It's the brand that's driven
by an obsession to control black women's bodies in this country.
Who we are, who can touch us, and what we
do with our bodies. That control includes everything from the
stereotypical perceptions of what we do with our bodies and
(00:46):
the actualized legal shackles that are placed on our bodies.
We're painted as dangerous yet disposable, or our pain is
completely ignored, overridden by generalizations and scripts that don't match
our liver realities. But today's Juneteenth, it's a celebration of
our history in this country, a day to rejoice for
(01:06):
black freedom and liberation, and a day to acknowledge a
living proof that our stories have always been at the
forefront for justice inequality. In this episode, I'm going to
paint a picture of how far we've come and how
far we still have to go. Welcome to the Unwanted Sorority,
a podcast and safe haven where black women, fem's, and
gender expansive folks speaks our truths about our experiences with
(01:29):
sexual violence, healing, and their sisterhood that formed. When we
name what tried to break us, sexual violence in what
is now the United States traces its roots back to
the very moment Christopher, yes Christopher Columbus, not the Christopher
we recognize Christopher Wallace set foot in the Caribbean. He
(01:52):
and subsequent colonizers who followed him didn't just claim land,
they claimed bodies. They treated land and flesh for profit.
Indigenous women, fems, and gender diverse people were sold into
a human sex trafficking system. Many survivors were as young
as nine or ten years old. Shout out to Chillane
University's All In Program. They are a holistic campus sexual
(02:14):
violence education program that have a robust history of sexual violence,
but they note a chilling fact in colonial common law.
Rape at the time was defined as quote carnal knowledge
of a woman ten years or older, forcibly and against
her will end quote. Notice what's missing here the rape
(02:36):
of men, what we would now define a statutory rape
of girls under ten, and even the rape of black women.
Because black women at the time weren't considered women, they
were property. Their rape produced more property children who belonged
to enslavers. That's how the law was rigged. It effectively
endorsed rape's role in slavery's profitability. This dispossession and disembodied
(03:00):
and of black women's at the stage for centuries of trauma.
It carried on through the eighteen hundreds in the United
States with a Transatlantic slave trade, which saw nearly thirteen
million African people kidnapped, forced onto European and American ships,
and trafficked across the Atlantic Ocean to be enslaved, abused,
and forever separated from the home, families, ancestors, and cultures.
(03:22):
According to the Equal Justice Initiative, so when we talk
about our current rape culture, when we unpack the intersections
of sexual violence and reproductive justice, we have to remember
these roots. We stand on the shoulders of ancestors whose
bodies were battlegrounds, which brings us to three names that
I want to lift up as the og founders of
(03:43):
the Unwanted Sorority, Anarca, Betsy, and Lucy. These three women
were among the original trailblazers of reproductive justice, though you
may not have ever heard their names in a standard
history class. Anarca, Betsy, and Lucy were enslaved on different
plantations near Montgomery, Alabama, in the mid eighteen hundreds. A
(04:06):
function of their living conditions, each woman developed vesico vaginal visculas,
which are tears between the bladder and vagina and or
rectum caused by traumatic childbirth. This condition was excruciatingly painful
and stigmatizing. Their symptoms from this condition, uncontrollable leakage of
urine and feces meant they were kept isolated on their plantations,
(04:29):
seen as broken by those who held them captive, and
because enslavers consider them tools not people, no meaningful medical
care existed for them in Slavers, desperate to get these
women back to their forced slab leased them quote unquote
to a man named doctor J. Marion Sims for ongoing
treatment for their condition. Statues of Sims could at one
(04:52):
point be spotted across the country, from Central Park in
New York City, which removed the statue in twenty eighteen,
to Montgomery, Alabama, where it still sits on the Capitol
lawn to this day. They served as icons of a
quote unquote medical genius, except in my opinion, he was
a grifter who performed up to thirty surgeries on anarca
alone without anesthesia within a three and a half year
(05:15):
period because he believed black women felt less pain. And
when I say he was a grifter, I mean it.
Although he was a doctor, he never specialized in gynecology.
In fact, he was known to have an aversion to
women's health. He had done everything from dentistry to pediatrics
to general surgery, but he fled South Carolina and moved
to Alabama after two of his patients died and for
(05:37):
some reason, he believed he could cure women suffering from
this disorder within six months. Delusion de Lulu Anarca, Betsy,
and Lucy endured excruciating experiments at the hands of Sins.
They were also forced to serve as surgery technicians, assisting
Sims and the procedures he conducted on one another. As
(05:59):
doctor Veronica Pimental notes in her write up honoring these
women for the twenty twenty one American College of Obstetricians
and Gynecologists. Quote despite the dehumanizing treatment they endured, they
were complex women and mothers who were knowledgeable and skillful.
They served as Sims surgical nurses and learned to heal
themselves in each other from the assault their bodies endured
(06:22):
from both the surgical experimentation and the reproductive enforced manual
work they performed end quote. When he published his findings,
he never even showed their phrases in his papers. He
only showed photos of white nurses performing surgeries on white patients.
He conveniently excluded Anarca, Betsy, Lucy, and the nine other
(06:43):
unnamed black women he actually conducted his early experiments on
from those photos. History amended courtesy of white supremacy. In fact,
we only know the names of Anarca, Betsy, and Lucy
because he included them in the writings of his research.
In truth, Sims exploited black women's suffering for fame and
money while black women suffered in barbaric conditions. Two centuries later,
(07:07):
the more up campus an organization committed to finding creative
ways to honor the voiceless, the minimized, and the ignored.
They've erected a statue in Montgomery, just steps away from
where Sims conducted these experiments, honoring anarca, Betsy and Lucy,
called the Mothers of Gynecology. Those statues stand not just
as homage, but as a reckoning. As we celebrate Juneteenth,
(07:30):
we must also honor these fore mothers who survived, and,
in surviving, set the stage for reproductive justice, a fight
we're still reckoning with today. In eighteen sixty one, the
Civil War erupted. That same year, Lincoln's Labor Code finally
put rape protections on paper for Southern Black women, but
(07:51):
in reality, legal protections meant very little if you were black.
Legal protections meant very little if you were a woman.
Women who try to file rape charges were often faced
with all white, all male jurors who effectively saw their
testimony as worthless. Interestingly enough, history textbooks often claimed the
Civil War as an anomaly when it comes to sexual violence.
(08:15):
They believe that that's the only war that saw no
widespread sexual violence or rape as strategic components of war.
And I mean, I feel like we all know better
that's revision, is history nonsense, And that's not even speaking
about global conflicts weaponizing sexual violence today. In actuality, black
women jured assaults from both Confederate and Union soldiers, who
(08:37):
often used it as a power play against the Confederate soldiers.
Why has sexual violence in wars and conflicts orically and
contemporarily been ignored racism and misogyny? And yet black women
did not vanish from the fight. Their resilience would lead
to one of history's most pivotal moments. Less than a
year after the date that we recognize as junenteenth, General
(08:58):
Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas to inform all the
enslaved people that they were free May first through the third.
In eighteen sixty six, Memphis, Tennessee, a white police officer
attempts to arrest a black veteran. Black neighbors, many of
whom are Union soldiers and veterans, gathered to defend him,
(09:19):
and tensions explode. White mobs, including local policemen and firemen,
reigned terror on South Memphis. Houses are burned, churches are torched,
schools are destroyed. Forty six black residents are killed, and
two hundred and eighty five are wounded. At least five
rapes occurred that were reported. At least these women would
(09:40):
become the first known women to testify to Congress about
sexual violence. Let me introduce you to these founders of
the Unwanted Sorority. First, we have Francis Thompson. Frances was
(10:01):
about twenty six years old at the time, born into
slavery around eighteen forty. She was a self identified quote
unquote cripple who used crutches to get around on account
of which she said was cancer in her foot. After
most of her enslavers died during the Civil War, Francis
began living as a free woman and made a living
(10:21):
sewing and washing clothes. Francis lived with her sixteen year
old housemate, Lucy Smith, who I'll tell you about in
a moment. On the night of May first, a group
of seven white men, including two policemen, busted into their home.
They forced Frances and Lucy to cook them suffer, stole
their money, and then demanded sex. When they refused, the
men beat and raped both of them. Francis later said
(10:44):
that Lucy was choked so badly she couldn't speak for
two weeks, and she was bed ridden for a fortnight.
On June first, eighteen sixty six, Francis stood before a
congressional committee where she testified quote, then men said we you,
but we told him we was not that kind of woman.
They said. It didn't make no damn bit of difference.
(11:06):
At sixteen, Lucy Smith was just a teenager, probably still
learning a lot about life and living under Francis's roof.
At the time of the invasion, Lucy's voice was gone
for days, her body was so weak, But by June
she also testified and was calm in her resolve, saying, quote,
they've done me wrong. Lucy made history as the youngest
(11:29):
testifier for the hearing on the rapes, and Francis made
history of her own as well. After a tragic incident,
which occurred ten years after she gave her congressional testimony.
Soon after the hearing, Francis went back to her normal life, sewing,
doing laundry, and taking contract work as a house servant.
Despite small altercations that she had previously had with the police,
(11:51):
she would always pay her fines and then she was released.
Francis was targeted by a neighbor one day who told
the Memphis Police Department that frances was not a woman
at all and that she was a quote man in disguise.
Despite France's having lived her entire life as a woman,
even while enslaved by the Wallace family during her childhood,
she was permitted to wear feminine clothes. The situation violated
(12:14):
the Memphis Public Decency Law, which went into effect shortly
before the Civil War started, that criminalized what they called
gross dressing. After a doctor confirmed that Francis was assigned
veil at birth. After a likely traumatic medical evaluation in
her cell at the police department, Francis was fining the
maximum amount of fifty dollars, which is around fourteen hundred
(12:36):
dollars today. When she couldn't pay, she was sentenced to
one hundred days on the chain gang, which didn't last long.
She was subjected to wild crowds that would come to
see her, make rude comments and just spectate. She was
later forced to spend the remainder of her sentence at
the police station. Tragically, she died shortly after her release.
(13:00):
Although the end of Francis's life is tragic, we lift
her up as a founder of the Unwanted's wordy because
her bravery for coming forward for this testimony despite all
that was at stake. Her care for community is central
to how we miss all remember to show up for
one another. And there's just something extra special about giving
Francis a shout out on Juneteenth and during Pride Month.
(13:25):
The next founder I'd like to introduce you to from
the Memphis Massacre is Rebecca Ann Bloom. Rebecca lived in
South Memphis with her husband, Peter. She was actually the
first of the five women to testify on May twelfth,
eighteen sixty six, just nine days after the violence ended.
On the night of May first, five white men stormed
(13:45):
into her home, forced Peter out, and held a knife
to Rebecca's throat. Her testimony states that they told her
husband to give them twenty five dollars or they'd take
him as a prisoner. He didn't have the money at
the time, so we went to go raize it within
the community. During that time that he was gone, she
was left alone with those men in her house. One
man held her down, knife to her throat, and he
(14:08):
raped her. Her testimony described the horrors of the night
as she exemplified unimaginable strength doing this so soon after
her attack. Next is Lucy Tibbs. Lucy was twenty four
and six months pregnant with her third child when a
gang of white men broke into her home on May second,
eighteen sixty six. Her brother, a Union Army veteran, kept
(14:33):
money at her house while he was away. Those same
men stole his savings, tied Lucy to her bed, and
one raped her repeatedly while her two small children huddled
in another room. Lucy told the committee, quote, I had
to give up to them. They said they'd kill me
if I did not. They put me on the bed.
They were plundering my house while it happened. The brutality
(14:57):
was unspeakable, Yet Lucy spoke on May thirtieth. She told
Congress everything, even identifying one assailant by name, risking her
safety to expose the atrocity. One simple line from her
testimony haunts me. Quote They'd done a very bad act.
That simple line and response to a likely traumatizing line
(15:18):
of questioning in the courtroom became her quiet but mighty
act of resistance. And finally, there's Harriet Armor, a married
woman whose rape took place in broad daylight on May second.
The two men busted into her cabin, one of whom
she knew as mister Dunn. They raped her twice, ignoring
her tears and pleased for them to stop. On May
(15:41):
thirty first, eighteen sixty six, Harriet told the Congressional Committee,
quote Dunn rushed into the small room and did that
bowl act end quote. That day, she named her attacker
in a public forum, an incredible act of bravery in
a city where police were part of the mob. Harriet's
testimony and those of the other fort made the Memphis
(16:02):
massacre impossible to ignore. And yet, and despite their testimonies,
not a single rapist from those three days was ever prosecuted.
Law enforcement, whether they were drunk or complicit, protected the mob,
so no one was held accountable for the murders or
community destruction either. Investigations from the Freedmen's Bureau in Congress
(16:25):
thoroughly documented these horrors, but white supremacist courts refused to
hold the perpetrators accountable. These women's courage, however, became a
legacy for future generations. Their names echo in our work,
in our healing, and in our sisterhood. Today, you may
(16:48):
be asking why or how could these women risk everything,
Their names, reputations, their safety to bear witness. The answer
is simple, because some of us are brave and I
want to be Bravery does not look one way. When
I talk about bravery, I don't mean it in the
sense of you have to name your perpetrators, you have
(17:08):
to go through a legal system where you have to
even report about your sexual violence experience. When I talk
about bravery, I mean it in the sense of the
book quote, all the women are white, all the blacks
are men, but some of us are brave. End quote.
It's a book that's edited by Gloria T. Hole, Patricia
(17:31):
Bell Scott, and Barbara Smith that highlights how black feminists
articulate this unique position for black women throughout history. For example,
in nineteen seventy seven, the Gambahi River Collective put it
this way, quote, we are all damaged people merely by
virtue of being Black women. We are dispossessed psychologically and
(17:52):
on every other level, and yet we feel the need
to struggle to change our condition and the condition of
all black women. These Memphis founders exemplify that sentiment. To me.
They didn't testify for pity. They may not have even
testified for justice. They testified to reclaim their humanity. They said,
(18:13):
if the laws won't protect me, we'll protect ourselves with
the truth. Their witness paved the way for future movements,
including hashtag me too, hashtags, Say her Name, Restorative Justice
circles in our very own space here with the Unwonted
Sorority again. Juneteenth is our celebration of Black liberation, but
today liberation means dismantling all those forms of violence that
(18:36):
are against us, which brings us to twenty twenty five. Atlanta,
Georgia Adriana Smith a thirty year old nurse and mother.
In February, she began suffering from excruciating headaches. After going
to the hospital, she gets sent home with migraine meds,
but returns the next day struggling to breathe and gurgling
in her sleep, according to her boyfriend, after finally getting
(18:59):
CT scanned. During that second visit, doctors found blood clots
in her brain. By morning, Adriana is declared brain dead,
but Adriana was nine weeks pregnant. George's Heartbeat Bill, also
known as the Life Act, bans nearly all abortions after
six weeks, so Imri University Hospital decides that they must
(19:20):
keep her body on life support until the fetus can
survive outside of the womb. Her family, like anyone seeking
medical care, expects compassion and comfort and for the family
to be at the forefront of medical decision making. Instead,
they're given no choice. They're simply notified of what Emeri
University Hospital has chosen to do for what they consider
(19:41):
compliance with the law. Adriana's mother, April Newkirk, noted that
her family's devastated, saying, quote, we weren't even given the
option to remove life support, and she clarifies that it's
not that they would choose to go that route, effectively
removing all chance of the fetus' survival, but the fact
that they weren't given the option has haunted them. This
(20:03):
echoes another case from Texas in twenty fourteen, Marlee Munos.
She was also brain dead and fourteen weeks pregnant. She
was kept on ventilation until the family sued and won.
Marlsee's baby was very unlikely to survive outside of the
loom due to complications of growing inside a body that
was no longer alive, and they're actually unsure of what
(20:25):
the status of Adriana's baby will be once it reaches
that thirty two week point. But we're seeing in real
time another example of medical experimentation due to legal restrictions
on women's bodies. And I don't know about you, but
enough is enough. Adriano's ordeal shows how heartbeat laws can
override medical ethics, personal dignity, and family wishes. And who
(20:48):
bears the brunt Black women, who already face a maternal
mortality rate of fifty point three per one hundred thousand
births compared to fourteen point five for white women according
to the poly Center from Maternal Mental Health. That's three
times higher. Decades of structural and systemic racism, misogyny, medical neglect,
(21:11):
and legal coercion converge to put us in jeopardy. So
when the state uses Adriana's body is a political pawn,
it's not just a single story. It's a continuation of
centuries long oppression. In twenty twenty five, our bodies remain
battleground picture research led by Black women for Black women,
(21:34):
Research that builds trust, not mistrust. Clinics where your insurance status,
your zip code, or your race doesn't determine your worth,
community and institutional supports that don't whitewash or exclude our
experiences in terms of survivors, resources and support on the unwanted. Already,
we imagine a future where black women, fem's, and gender
(21:55):
expansive folks have full bodily autonomy, where our health choices
and fates aren't decided by politicians, judges, or doctors. And
we're talking with guests about that future, how they're building
it in their everyday lives, and what sisterhood and collaboration
looks like to work towards that collectivision. These futures start
in community gatherings, community funding, mutual aid, and policy advocacy
(22:18):
to overturn some of those cruel laws, and healing circles
where survivors find each other and connect, just like this one.
So on this show, we're mapping a road towards liberation
with our own hands. In this episode, we've traveled from
colonial violence to post Civil war rebellions, from Anarcus suffering
to Adriana Smith's modern fight. We've covered our founders Anarca, Betsy,
(22:44):
Lucy Francis, Lucy Smith, Rebecca, Lucy Tibbs, and Harriet and
tied their legacies to today's fight for bodily autonomy, medical justice,
and sexual violence freedom. With our contemporary founder Adriana even
glimpsed at afrofutures where black women lead in healing and today,
on Juneteenth, twenty twenty five, we celebrate emancipation not just
(23:09):
from our enslavement in this country, but from silence, shame,
and state control over our bodies
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