The Innocence of Joan Little

Will Packer ~ ~ ~ Joan Little

Will Packer is getting ready to develop a miniseries adaptation about the landmark case of Joan Little, called The Innocence of Joan Little, reports Shadow and Act.

Little’s case in 1974 drew national attention to a jail in Beaufort County in Washington, North Carolina, after Little was found innocent for killing a jailer who attempted to rape her. It was a landmark case, not only the first in United States history to recognize a woman’s right to kill a potential rapist in self-defense but also a case that acknowledged the rights of prisoners in the United States. She was found not guilty by a jury of six whites and six African-Americans.

Little was the first woman in US history to be acquitted under the defense that she killed 62-year-old Clarence Alligood, her would-be rapist, in self-defense. Her case set off a wave of support from civil rights, feminist, and anti-death penalty movements at the time as well.

Will Packer’s Will Packer Productions as well as Paulist Productions are on board to develop and produce the miniseries, though no network is yet attached, and there has been no word on casting. The series will be based on the book by author James Reston Jr., “The Innocence of Joan Little: A Southern Mystery.”

End Invasion Searches Of Female Prisoners

From Detriot Free Press:

The American Civil Liberties Union said it plans today to urge the Michigan Department of Corrections to ban an invasive vaginal strip search that humiliates female prisoners.

It said women are forced to expose themselves, often with unclean hands while sitting on an unsanitized chair and in full view of other prisoners, while a female guard checks to see whether they're concealing contraband.

The ACLU said it believes Michigan's is the only prison system in the nation to routinely use such searches as a matter of policy.

The searches can be especially traumatic because many female prisoners are victims of sexual assault, the ACLU said.

Over the years, female prisoners in Michigan have been awarded more than $100 million in suits resulting from sexual assaults by corrections staff.

Remembering Almena Lomax

From Black Star News:

She was a pioneering journalist who founded a newspaper at a most challenging time in the nation's history, especially for a Black woman.

Almena Lomax, 95, who was also a civil rights activists, died on March 25, in Pasadena, California after a brief illness; the family did not disclose details.

Mrs. Lomax became the first black journalist to be accredited by the Motion Picture Academy, and led boycotts of the movies “Porgy and Bess” and “Imitation of Life,” which Mrs. Lomax believed “libeled the Negro race.” Active in the Civil Rights Movement, in 1956 Mrs. Lomax was active in the bus boycott, and stayed with Martin Luther King, Jr. and his family in Montgomery, Alabama, producing her highly acclaimed “Mother’s Day in Montgomery: Boycott Leader Serves His Congregation Toynbee, Langston Hughes, Emerson and Jesus Christ, and is Received in Complete Consanguinity.”

Claudette Colvin

From the New York Times:

On that supercharged day in 1955, when Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Ala., she rode her way into history books, credited with helping to ignite the civil rights movement.

But there was another woman, named Claudette Colvin, who refused to be treated like a substandard citizen on one of those Montgomery buses — and she did it nine months before Mrs. Parks. The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made his political debut fighting her arrest. Moreover, she was the star witness in the legal case that eventually forced bus desegregation.

Yet instead of being celebrated, Ms. Colvin has lived unheralded in the Bronx for decades, initially cast off by black leaders who feared she was not the right face for their battle, according to a new book that has plucked her from obscurity.

At the time, the arrest was big news. Black leaders, among them Dr. King, jumped at the opportunity to use her case to fight segregation laws in court. “Negro Girl Found Guilty of Segregation Violation” was the headline in The Alabama Journal. The article said that Ms. Colvin, “a bespectacled, studious looking high school student,” accepted the ruling “with the same cool aloofness she had maintained” during the hearing.

As chronicled by Mr. Hoose, more than 100 letters of support arrived for Ms. Colvin — sent in care of Mrs. Rosa Parks, secretary of the Montgomery branch of the N.A.A.C.P.