Florida – drapetomaniac theatre: burning with a fever for freedom

Angelia Mangum, 19, and Tjhisha Ball, 18, were murdered in Jacksonville, FL, last week.

They were the 3rd and 4th women to be murdered there this month, and the 2nd and 3rd murdered in a ten day period. Much has been made in the days since their slayings in the national media of other horrific crimes — the disappearance of a white woman UVA student, Ray Rice and other NFL player’s domestic violence cases, and the murder of Jon Crawford by Ohio police after a crank call identified him as a threat. But this story of the murder of two young Black women, found tied up and dumped along a dark and empty Florida underpass, has been deemed insignificant and un-news-worthy.

Here’s a short video clip on the story:

[Video] Two Women Killed, Found Dead Along Florida Road

Is it their youth, their Blackness, their femininity, or the rumor of their history of engaging in sex work that makes them unworthy of our attention? Might it be a combination of all of the above? Might it be another tale in the country’s long history of sexual violence against Black women that asserts they are always already the un-injurable, unworthy, un-rape-able dead?

Celia, Age 19 — *Celia, age 19, stopped her master from assaulting her in June 1855.*

Historically, Black women have been prevented by law from claiming injury or victimization in the U.S. In 1850, 14-year-old Celia, an African American girl, was purchased by Robert Newsome, a prosperous Missouri farmer. He began sexually assaulting her almost immediately, forcing her to give birth to two of his children over the next five years. Like many Black women slaves, Newsome valued Celia for her agricultural, domestic and reproductive labor — her work in the field, in the big house, and on her back. In 1855 at age 19, Celia reached the limits of her endurance and fought back. When Newsome attacked her on the evening of June 23 in her cabin, she fought back, hitting him over the head with a large stick and killing him. To cover up the murder, she burned the body in her fireplace, buried the larger bones that the fire did not consume, and spread his ashes over the plantation. She was soon arrested, tried, convicted and ultimately executed for the murder. Her assertion that both the Devil compelled her to do it and that she had defended herself fell on death ears based upon the legal understanding that Black women were hypersexual and could not be the victims of rape; that as slaves and property they had no right to bodily integrity anyway; and finally, that they had no right to defend themselves against the incursions of white men. Black women simply had no selves to defend. They would not gain the right to bodily integrity and to use lethal force against white male attackers until the mid-1970s, when the case of Joanne Little set a new precedent.

Accused in 1974 of killing her jailer, Little claimed self-defense and ultimately would be exonerated — *Accused in 1974 of killing the prison guard who attempted to rape her in her jail cell, 20-year-old Little claimed self-defense and ultimately would be found not guilty.*

The fact that Angelia and Tjhisha may have been sex workers makes their murders all the more worrisome for me, because as sex workers, they were therefore amongst the most vulnerable in our society. Young women (and men) don’t turn to sex work out of a love of dick or a desire for danger. There may be a need for quick cash, yes, but engaging in sex work is a serious gamble that no one steps into without fear and serious consideration. And, of course, assistance.

Somebody always teaches you the trade, and often, long before you turn 18 you’ve been molested and pimped by a family member, and raped by older, manipulative, so-called boyfriends. And of course, there is the john who wants to buy you and your services to pleasure them. Selling sex is criminalized, but the act of purchasing it gets dismissed as something somehow less degrading or offensive in the American imaginary.

The complete lack of coverage of the brutal murders of Angelia Mangum, 19, and Tjhisha Ball, 18, except in a handful of media outlets and a growing number of alternative black feminist venues, indicates just how biased the media is for another kind of story of death, destruction and justice. They’ve already tracked down and arrested a suspect in the UVA student disappearance, and identified the cops involved in the Walmart travesty. But in this case, just more silence and inaction. #BlackLivesMatter

Michael Dunn’s depraved indifference for other people’s lives is still hitting me. How do you authorize yourself to shoot other human beings nearly a dozen times, and then drive away? What kind of grown man who dislikes “rap music” purposefully parks next to a car with that kind of music blasting, except one who is looking for the slightest provocation to sling his white privilege around and try to intimidate the listeners? Weren’t there other parking spaces at the gas station? Like Zimmerman, this all could have been avoided but I bet he saw they were kids and said to himself, I’m going to show them my white dick. Their youth, coupled with the music and oversized luxury vehicle (a demonstration of their family’s relative worth esp. in comparison to his shitty car) was all the provocation he needed. That they refused — as was their right — to comply with his “request” they turn down the music was just the excuse he was looking for. Add his name to a long list of white cowards who take life and flee. Guess he thought he could/should get away with it like those hundreds of faceless lynch mobs, or Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam who took Emmett Till’s life, or George Zimmerman. This is how you establish yourself as a white male patriarch, by using black bodies as props in a theatre of domination. That’s why you run and hide. That’s why after seeing the news coverage of your actions, including the death of Jordan Davis, you do everything you possibly can to evade personal responsibility in favor of sleep and the next morning drive over 150 miles home like nothing happened. Because you weren’t in fear of your own life, not in the sense of immanent danger from these four, but because you fear that your life ain’t shit, and you ain’t shit, and you as a white man ain’t shit. And you are absolutely right.