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She was taken into the woods, beaten, and brutally lynched. Her body was abandoned, her murderers were never convicted, and her story was erased – until now.
When we discuss the horrific history of lynching, our minds jump to white mobs torturing Black men to death.
But Black women were lynched too – at least 188 Black women, from 1838 to 1969. Who were these women, and why don’t we know about them?
Women were rarely listed by name in lynching reports. Additionally, lynch mobs publicly humilated Black men – while lynching Black women was typically done in private.
Often the women were raped before a lynching, or worse: unborn fetuses were even cut out of pregnant women’s abdomens and brutalized in front of their mothers.
The danger of erasing Black women from the history of lynching is that this erasure bleeds into Black women being left out of current conversations, too.
Since 2015 at least 50 Black women have been killed by police, if not more!
While it’s important to honor Black men murdered by police, we must also remember Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor, Atatiana Jefferson, India Kager, Bettie Jones – the list goes on.
We might never know how many Black women were lynched, or killed by police, but we honor them by continuing to expose the truth about them and by saying their names.