Prostitution in the United States has affected black people, especially women, in unique ways. From the time of slavery to Jim crow America, to modern police brutality, black women have been uniquely oppressed in the context of sexual violence and prostitution.
During the antebellum era, enslaved women were forced into performing sexual labor for their white male slave owners. In fact, while selling slaves for manual labor was done openly, a sex trade that dealt in black women was well documented as well. Lighter skinned slaves, called “fancy maids,” were bought and sold specifically for the purpose of sexual exploitation, both for the pleasure of their oppressor and in order to reproduce more laborers. According to a letter which was quoted in Edward E. Baptist’s “Cuffy,” “Fancy Maids,” and “One-Eyed Men”: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States, slave trader Isaac Franklin joked that the women he sold could be used to open a “whore house,” but this was not a case of prostitution, it was an undeniable case of sex trafficking.
After emancipation, racial segregation became the norm, but thriving black communities formed in many of these historically black neighborhoods. During the progressive era, another type of segregation became popular: the segregation of vice. The high class of society did not want to see the saloons, gambling houses, and especially brothels on their fair city streets, so many communities segregated their vice districts. As you would predict, this affected the already marginalized black communities. In cities like Lexington, KY city officials zoned their red-light districts in black neighborhoods. Now, instead of just being marginalized on the basis of race, they were also forced into proximity with vice and crime. Mothers were forced to raise their children in these neighborhoods, exposing them to violence and sexuality long before an appropriate age. Making complaints to city officials did not make much of a difference. The families’ complaints would not be taken seriously by white city officials such as Governor Simon Buckner of Kentucky, who, as Maryjean Wall relates in her book Madam Belle: Sex, Money, and Influence in a Southern Brothel, did not consider it to be a serious issue as long as the upstanding white citizens were happy. In Fort Smith, newspapers such as this issue of the Southwest American make mention of a historically black neighborhood and well-known vice district called Red Row, where crime and vice of all sorts were reported.
This forced proximity to crime likely influenced racial stereotypes, which could at least partially explain why black people are more likely to experience police brutality. According to the Sentencing Project, police officers are over 2.5 times as likely to threaten or use non-lethal force or use lethal force on black Americans than they are for white Americans. It isn’t just non-sexual bodily harm, though. Black women, sex workers in particular, have experienced police sexual brutality at an astronomical rate. Jasmine Sankofa, in her paper Mapping the Blank: Centering Black Women’s Vulnerability to Police Sexual Violence to Upend Mainstream Police Reform said it best when she said that “Invasive searches, profiling as sex workers, and the operation of controlling images have historically justified access to Black women’s bodies.”
Not only are women of color more likely to experience sexual violence at the hands of the officers meant to protect them, but they are also less likely to receive justice for crimes committed against them. In fact, Sylvia Wynter, in her essay “No Humans Involved”: An Open Letter to my Colleagues describes her horror when she learns that the Los Angeles Police Department routinely used the acronym N.H.I., meaning “no humans involved” to denote crimes committed against people of color. While this term was not used exclusively for black women, the effects on black women are noticeable. While the country was mourning and demanding justice for Rodney King, who was beaten to death by L.A.P.D officers (which you can read about here), 11 black women sex workers were brutally raped and murdered by Benjamin Atkins. Though he confessed and was received 11 life sentences for his crimes, these 11 women received little media attention. Lonnie David Franklin jr., more commonly known as the Grim Sleeper, was another serial killer who was active between the mid-eighties and 2007. As the L.A Times describes, he was known to target “women who were drug addicts or prostitutes and often dumped their naked bodies alongside roads or in the trash.” The article goes on to say that these women’s deaths “drew little, if any, media attention.”
It is alarming how many examples there are of segregation-related oppression and sexual violence that have disproportionately affected black women, especially sex workers, throughout American history. We at Miss Laura’s are proud to observe Black History Month by honoring women who have been disregarded in their right to their bodies, their homes, and their justice.