I come from a people who are familiar with the brutal lash of injustice. I am the direct descendant of survivors of the Middle Passage. My brown skin and course hair holds within them the songs of those who knew God by different names. I learned my God's name from the elders of my church. They called my God "way maker" and "deliverer". They understood the tension between God's power and presence as existing within a long arch of history and that while God may not come when you want, God shows up on time. They were women with deeply creased skin that was the same color as mine. Women like Jannie Ligons.
For every towering figure in movements for civil and human rights like Martin Luther King, there are thousands of foot soldiers driving the work. Everyday heroes like Jannie Ligons who rise to extraordinary heights when faced with grave injustice. On June 18, 2014, Jannie Ligons was driving home after an evening of playing cards and dominoes. The grandmother often spent her Fridays nights like this--relaxing after work with her friends. Her regular route took her through the Eastside of Oklahoma City. An historic African-American neighborhood, it is a community thick with the stories. To walk the streets of the Eastside is to walk in the shadows of footprints left by women and men who were exiles of the Tulsa Race Riots of 1921 and leaders in the 1958 Oklahoma City sit-ins. Today the once thriving mixed-income community is a ghost of its former self. An unforeseen consequence of the victory of integration was a black middle class exodus into newer, whiter, frontiers. Those left behind faced thirty years of municipal disinvestment that eventually led the Oklahoma City Council to declare the area blighted in 2014.
As Ms. Ligons she drove past the familiar places that provided the backdrop of her own story, she did not know that her life was about to be inalterably changed. That night she was stopped by a 27-year-old Oklahoma City police officer named Daniel Holtzclaw. During their encounter Holtzclaw assaulted Ms. Ligons forcing her to expose her body and perform sexual acts under the threat of violence or imprisonment. Rape culture teaches victims to be silent in the face of their trauma. Yet Ms. Ligons refused to let her story go unheard,"So all I can say is, I was innocent and he just picked the wrong lady to stop that night."
Ms. Ligons complaint launched an investigation that eventually surfaced 13 of Daniel Holtzclaw's victims. All poor. All black. Women that Holtzclaw believed could be exploited with little consequence because of their low status in the city's social hierarchy. When asked by law enforcement why she had not come forward, one victim spoke forth a sentiment that would be echoed by many of the others that followed,"I didn't think no one would believe me."
And why should she? As civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer once said, "A black women's body was never hers alone." While it may be tempting to attribute the victim's statement as a by-product of rape culture's code of silence, it is a truth-claim rooted in a lived understanding of misogynoir. Misogynoir, a term coined by Dr. Moya Bailey, refers to a form of anti-black misogyny which functions at the intersection of racism, sexism, and white supremacy. It renders Black women "not human" and reduces them to objects. Misogynoir made Holtzclaw feel confident that he would not be caught. Misogynoir is why the case of these women went largely ignored by the media.
Throughout American history the bodies of black women and girls have been treated as communal property to be bought, sold, and used at will. From the grotesque system of chattel slavery in which black women were routinely raped in the name of maximizing profits to contemporary examples in pop culture in which the black female body is displayed as a hypersexual object for consumption. Daniel Holtzclaw did not defy the norm. He instead upheld a disgusting, demented, legacy of abuse that predates the founding of the nation.
Yet for as long as black women have been the shackled by the chains of sexual exploitation, there have always been voices like Ms. Ligons speaking out in resistance. Women like Recy Taylor who was gang raped by six white men on her way home from church in September 1944. When the NAACP office in nearby Montgomery, Alabama got word of Taylor's case, they sent their best investigator to the scene of the crime. That woman would later become the catalyst for a freedom movement that would change the course of U.S. history. Her name was Rosa Parks.
If we are serious about stopping the epidemic of crimes against black women and girls we must center their stories at the heart of our advocacy. Last December I joined a national coalition of faith leaders to launch a campaign called #StandwithBWG, a faith-filled, public education campaign that prioritizes the wellbeing of black women and girls through liturgy, advocacy for equitable public policy and digital engagement. Building on the excellent work of the #Sayhername campaign, it is an effort designed to support and not supplant, existing leadership and advocacy of black women and girls on their own behalf. Our goal is to confront and combat the demon of misogynoir in one of the places that it most comfortably resides: within our religious communities. For more information about the campaign email standwithbwg@gmail.com and view the action guide here.
On December 10, 2015, Daniel Holtzclaw was convicted on 18 of 36 counts ranging from rape to sexual battery. The next day, Jannie Ligons stood at a press conference and publically recounted the events of that fateful June evening for the first time. Other survivors of Holtzclaw's horrors surrounded her. After greeting the gathered crowd of media affiliates, she gave praise and thanked her God for letting her live to tell her story.
A version of this article originally appeared in Moyo.