In this brief episode, we look at how White Supremacists, from Alfred Waddell in Wilmington to Donald Trump, have used the specter of Black men raping White women, for political ends.
Transcript
Osha Davidson 00:00
Hi, this is Osha gray Davidson. When I first produced the segment on the Wilmington coup of 1898, that’s Episode 10, there was a lot of material I had to cut, something that happens in just about every episode. But one section seemed too important to just throw away. It concerns the pretext for the coup, outrage over rape, or more specifically, how White supremacists use the specter of Black men, raping White women to whip up racist fury, and then turn it into political capital, at great cost to Black lives. Rape as racist propaganda began long before Wilmington, and the practice continues to this day. Here’s that story.
News anchor 00:46
This morning we’re remembering Emmett Till on the 65th anniversary of his killing. The 14 year old Black teenager was brutally murdered by two White men, after he was accused of whistling at a White woman in Mississippi.
Osha Davidson 01:01
Till, who lived in Chicago, was visiting relatives in Mississippi in the summer of 1955. The husband of the woman who whistled at as a joke and the man’s brother kidnapped Till in the middle of the night. They beat him and tortured him before shooting the boy in the head. They stole a 60 pound industrial fan, lashed it to Till’s body with barbed wire and tossed him into the Tallahatchie River.
Osha Davidson 01:28
Of the thousands of Black men lynched in the early 20th century, about a third had been accused of rape or attempted rape. Georgetown Law professor and former federal prosecutor Paul Butler has called the specter of Black on White rape, the ultimate crime in the American imagery.
Paul Butler 01:46
We have this narrative throughout history of the most notorious crime being an African American man who is charged with sexually assaulting a White woman. That summons all these stereotypes about Black men as violent thugs. We would like to think that that’s something we left back in the old Jim Crow.
Osha Davidson 02:08
But this racist dynamic didn’t end with the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Two decades later, it was used to inflame passions after a White woman was beaten and raped while jogging in New York City’s Central Park in April 1989.
News clips 02:23
In New York City this morning a jogger is fighting for her life after a brutal attack in Central Park…viciously battered and unconscious, wearing only a jogging bra her hands tied over her mouth.
Osha Davidson 02:35
The local and even national media stoked White fears by unleashing a flood of lurid stories that were often exaggerated.
News clips 02:43
Some of the young men told police they were just out “wilding”…Wilding is a word you won’t find in Webster’s…Wilding, New York City Police say that’s new teenage slang for rampaging in wolf packs, attacking people just for the fun.
Osha Davidson 02:57
Within days, police arrested and coerced confessions from five boys aged 14 to 16. Four of them were Black and one Hispanic. Each of them immediately recanted their confessions. The police had no evidence linking the boys to the crime. In fact, DNA from semen found at the scene didn’t match any of the five boys arrested by the police. But the frenzy increased. The boys were dubbed the Central Park Five. New York City Mayor Ed Koch called it “the crime of the century.” And just 12 days after the assault and more than a year before the first trial began, Donald Trump, then a real estate magnate, purchased a full page ad in four New York newspapers. Trump called for the boys to be executed. He wrote that the city was quote, “ruled by the law of the streets as roving bands of wild criminals roam our neighborhoods, dispensing their own vicious brand of twisted hatred and whomever they encounter” end quote. The ads ran under a banner headline printed in all caps that took up half the page. “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY!” it read. “BRING BACK OUT POLICE!”
Donald Trump 04:12
You better believe that I hate the people that took this girl and raped her brutally. You better believe it. And it’s more than anger. It’s hatred. And I want society to HATE them.
Osha Davidson 04:24
Despite the lack of any evidence, all five boys were convicted and sent to prison for between five and 13 years. In 2001, a convicted serial rapist and murderer already in prison, admitted that he had committed the brutal crime in Central Park acting alone. His DNA match that found on the victim. The Central Park five finally became the exonerated five. The city was forced to settle a lawsuit for its callous indifference in subjecting five innocent boys to the horrors of prison for years. Here’s Yusef Salaam, one of the five speaking with Chris Hayes on MSNBC about Donald Trump’s role in the case,
Yusef Salaam 05:08
This thing that he did to us calling for reinstatement of the death penalty, I always think that had this been the 1950s we would have become modern day Emmitt Tills. He had published our names or phone numbers and our addresses in New York City’s newspapers. And so what was happening was people began to call us at any time of day or night, you know, threaten us with hate mail. By Donald Trump taking out this ad, what I think is that he was really calling to see if there was some body from the dark enclaves of society that will kick in our doors, drag us from our homes and hang us from trees in Central Park. That’s the kind of sick type of justice that they were looking for. You know, he wanted us, he wanted us dead. You know, when you look at the video tape, the videotapes that he made after the statements that he made after that, it’s very, very clear that he said that he wanted to hate us. He wanted us to be afraid. And by us, he was talking directly about the Central Park Five, what he was talking about also, the Black and Brown people that we look at that being shot down all over the country today.
Osha Davidson 06:13
As a presidential candidate in 2016, Trump doubled down on his claim that the Central Park Five were guilty of violently raping a White woman. Despite the other man’s confession. Despite the DNA evidence. Despite the fact that the same district attorney who presided over their case, came to realize their innocence and had their convictions vacated. Despite the city paying $41 million to the five to settle a civil rights lawsuit.
Osha Davidson 06:47
Again, Yusef Salaam, speaking in 2016.
Yusef Salaam 06:51
You know, if he’s saying that he wants to be the law in order president, and he’s talking about policies and practices that have been ruled unconstitutional and unjust, and he’s talking about, he wants to bring this type of stuff back. I mean, I’m scared for my life. What happens if this person actually becomes president?
Osha Davidson 07:14
For The American project, I’m Osha Gray Davidson.