Biography
Joan Little (also written Joanne Little) was a young Black woman who became a landmark figure in the women's, Black-liberation, and anti-death-penalty movements. As The Black Panther reported (November 16, 1974), she had been held in the Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina — pending appeal of a breaking-and-entering conviction — when, on August 27, 1974, the jail's night guard Clarence Alligood was found dead in her cell, killed with an ice pick and naked from the waist down. Little, the only woman and only Black woman in a jail with all-White guards, had fled and turned herself in to authorities in Raleigh eight days later, explaining that Alligood had forced repeated sexual advances on her and that she killed him defending herself. Charged with first-degree murder and facing the death penalty, she was acquitted in August 1975 — widely recognized as the first woman in the United States acquitted of murder on the grounds of resisting sexual assault.
Black North Carolina woman who became a national cause after killing a jailer who sexually assaulted her (acquitted 1975 on self-defense). The Black Panther Vol. 18 no.17 (1978) covers her subsequent prison-escape trial in Raleigh, with attorney William Kunstler seeking removal to federal court. [Source: The Black Panther (Black Panther Party newspaper), v18 no.17; digitized at marxists.org — https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/black-panther/index.htm]
