"IT WAS LIKE ALL OF US HAD BEEN RAPED"

Betty Jean Owens

• May 2, 1959- Four white men in Tallahassee, FL made a pact  to “go out and get a nigger girl” and have an “all night party.”
• They armed themselves with shotguns and switchblades and crept up behind a  parked car in a Park
• 4 students (2 black males and 2 black females)
• The men approached the car and ordered all four passengers out using a gun
• The men ordered the black males to drive off slowly leaving the 4 with the two black females
• One of the females escaped leaving the four with Betty, she was taken deep into the park and abused and raped repeatedly.
• The 3 that had escaped reached a police station and to their surprise the cops immediately went searching for her. They pulled over the car and found her gag and tied in the back seat.
• At the Jim Crow trial, Owens testified against her rapists; one defense attorney referred to her as a “(N-word) wench” in front of the all-white, all-male jury.
• The four men were convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

*The life sentence was a first for the South and the trial was a civil rights watershed, helping to end the conspiracy of silence around white sexual violence against black women–a practice that was rooted in slavery.

*Had these rapists did their deed in Virginia, they likely would have faced the same fate the Martinsville Seven faced:: the death penalty.