Becky and Karen aren’t new characters in the story of Race in America.

*Below is an incomplete and ever-developing history of Becky’s and Karen’s - women quick to blame the easy scapegoat: black men.

 1876

The Harley family were wealthy South Carolina slave owners until the end of the Civil War. On September 15, 1876, Lucy Foreman Harley reported to her husband that she was assaulted by two Black men. An enraged posse formed and the Ellenton Riot broke out across Aiken County lines. A manhunt began, starting with the killing of an innocent Black man named Peter Williams; it wasn’t long before the paramilitary mob had swelled to 600 white men, hunting and killing Black men in the streets. 

The New York Times reported as many as 100 dead in the three-day massacre that stemmed from Harley’s claims.

In the wake of the murders, numerous witnesses testified that the attack was politically motivated to suppress Black Republican voting in an upcoming election.

1891

In 1891, rumors spread through Omaha, Nebraska that a 5-year-old white girl named Lizzie Yates was raped by a Black man known as “Joe Coe”. He was charged and jailed the very same day--without a shred of evidence.

The Omaha Bee incorrectly reported that Lizzie Yates died from her injuries. Within hours, a mob of 1,000 white men stormed the jail and dragged Joe Coe to a brutal death. The innocent husband and father was savagely lynched.

Years later, Lizzie Yates admitted that the rape never happened.

1898

Rebecca Latimer Felton was championed as a progressive Georgia suffragette and the first female Senator. But history forgets her role in the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898.

She wrote a column that stated: "If it requires lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from ravening, drunken human beasts, then I say lynch a thousand Negroes a week... if it is necessary.”

Her words angered Black editor Alex Manly, who published a response acknowledging consensual relationships between Black men and white women.

Manly’s office was lit ablaze. At least 25 Black people were killed; some bodies rumored to have been thrown in the river.

To this day, Rebecca is regarded as a Georgian hero.

 1906

On September 22, 1906, Atlanta newspapers reported four separate assaults of white women by Black men. 

At a time when the Black population of Atlanta was growing, as well as interracial job competition and a Black elite class, racial tensions were already sky-high. The alleged assaults pushed white residents over the edge. On the evening of September 22, the Atlanta Race Riot broke out. White mobs descended on the Brownsville district of Atlanta, set buildings ablaze, and savagely attacked Black men at random. Dozens were killed, many others were wounded, and considerable Black-owned property was destroyed.

None of the alleged assaults would ever be substantiated; it’s unclear whether there were white women who reported these claims, or the papers were weaponizing white male rage, provoking the instinct to defend vulnerable white women.

 1908

In August of 1908, 21-year-old white woman Mabel Hallam claimed that a Black man had raped her. This incident--along with another alleged Black-on-white crime--enraged the white masses, who swarmed into a frenzied mob. Unable to lynch the men they were after, the mob went on a violent rampage. They tore through Black neighborhoods, looting stores and burning homes, shot innocent Black civilians, and lynched two elderly Black men.

A grand jury brought over 100 indictments against members of the mob, but only one man would be convicted.

Two weeks after the riot, Mabel Hallam would confess to a grand jury that her story of rape by a Black man was a lie.

The devastation of the Springfield Race Riot was a key catalyst in the formation of the NAACP.

1919

On September 25, 1919, white couple Milton Hoffman and Agnes Loeback reported an armed robbery by a Black man. 19-year-old Loeback also said he had raped her. On the 26th, the Omaha Bee ran a headline that a “black beast” had assaulted a white girl. The white residents of Omaha were enraged.

A “suspicious negro” named William Brown was arrested on little evidence. He would never have the chance to clear his name. A mob gathered to murder him; thousands of white people swarmed streets. On September 28th, the mob burned the courthouse and seized Brown. He was beaten, hanged, shot, burned, and paraded through the streets.

Historians today believe that William Brown was wrongfully accused.

He is thought to have been the victim of a politically inspired maneuver to vote the mayor out of office. If this theory is correct—the maneuver was successful.

1920

The John Robinson Circus stopped to perform in Duluth, Minnesota on June 14, 1920. After attending with a friend, 19-year-old white woman Irene Tusken reported that she was attacked and raped by Black circus workers. A doctor examined her and found no evidence of sexual assault. Six Black men were arrested, despite a lack of evidence tying them to the alleged crime.

It’s unclear whether the assault occurred; however, the citizens of Duluth weren’t interested in a fair trial. The enraged white masses were eager to use Tusken’s allegations to start a riot. On June 15, a mob of 5,000 stormed the jail, using bricks, timber, and saws to drag three of the accused--Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie--from their cells. A mock trial found each of the young men guilty; they were beaten and publicly hanged.

Nearly a tenth of the city’s population is thought to have been voyeurs at the Duluth Lynchings. No one was ever convicted.

1923

On January 1, 1923, 22-year-old Fannie Taylor woke her neighbors in Sumner, FL, screaming that a Black man had attacked her. A Black resident who worked for Fannie said she had a white lover who had hit her; that the story was an excuse for the bruise.

But it didn’t matter. Her husband gathered a group of men and stormed the Black town of Rosewood. The mob swelled to over 300. Black residents’ homes were burned; they were forced to fight or flee.

There were six reported Black deaths, but survivors counted up to 27. No one was arrested. No Black families returned to the destroyed town.

A journalist dug up the forgotten massacre in 1982. The state investigated and determined that officials had failed to protect residents; they issued checks to former residents, for the first time a state had compensated Black residents for racial injustice.

 1931

On March 25, 1931, two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, accused a group of nine young Black men, ranging from 13 to 19 years old, of raping them aboard a train.

The nine teenagers, who would come to be known as the Scottsboro Boys, were transferred to Scottsboro to await trial. An angry white mob surrounded the jail, eager for a lynching; the Alabama National Guard had to be called to prevent it.

The judge instructed the jury: “Where the woman charged to have been raped is white there is a strong presumption under the law that she will not and did not yield voluntarily to intercourse with the defendant, a Negro.” For years the boys would be put repeatedly through the justice system, continually convicted by all-white juries. 

Years later, Bates admitted she’d made it up to cover for sneaking onto trains and engaging in unmarried sex — behavior that would have been considered unrespectable for women at that time. 

Even following her confession and evidence from the initial medical examination of the women that refuted the rape charge, the boys would continue to be re-convicted--spending a collective many years incarcerated for crimes that were entirely made up to protect the white women that invented them.

Eventually, charges would be dropped for five of the men, and one was pardoned in 1976. The final three were pardoned in 2013—but by then, they were all dead.

 1940

In December of 1940, in Greenwich, Connecticut, a wealthy white woman named Eleanor Strubing accused her 31-year-old Black butler, Joseph Spell, of sexual assault. She tearfully reported that he had raped her four times and then thrown her into a river, attempting to kill her. Spell was arrested and jailed awaiting trial.

The New York Times broke the story with the sensational headline: "Mrs. J.K. Strubing Is Kidnapped And Hurled Off Bridge by Butler." The article alleged that the butler “confessed after 16 hours" of interrogation. He was facing 30 years in prison. 

The NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Thurgood Marshall believed in Spell’s innocence. They took on Spell’s case and represented him in court—providing evidence that Strubing had lied about the attack. According to Marshall, Strubing had a consensual sexual affair with Spell; panicked by the possibility of an unexplainable pregnancy, she accused Spell of rape in order to justify it. His argument was so powerful that an all-white jury found Joseph Spell not guilty.

Eleanor Strubing—the daughter of an investment banker and stock exchange executive—was never prosecuted for lying under oath.

The 2017 movie Marshall was based on the trial. 

 1955

While visiting family in Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmet Till encountered 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant, a white married proprietor of a small grocery store. Although what happened at the store is a matter of dispute, Till was accused of flirting with Bryant. Accusations that he whistled at her and made physical advances would cost him his life.

Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J.W. Milam abducted Till from his great uncle’s house, then proceeded to torture and murder him. His mutilated body was recovered from a river and sent back to his mother in Chicago, where she held an open casket funeral for Americans to see firsthand the horror and brutality of lynching. An all-white jury cleared Roy and his half-brother of all charges though they went on to publicly admit - on the radio - that they killed him.

Carolyn Bryant would later retract the majority of her statements, saying “nothing that boy did could ever justify what happened to him."

Till’s murder play a critical role in the buildup to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

 2009

In 2009, 40-year-old Bonnie Sweeten spurred an intensive search by federal and local authorities by making a fake 911 call to say she and her 9-year-old daughter had been kidnapped. The alleged perpetrators were two Black men in a truck.

After a nationwide manhunt that involved more than a dozen law-enforcement agencies, FBI agents tracked her to Disney World in Florida. She had taken her daughter on a secret vacation to avoid the consequences of a crime spree.

She was charged with swindling her employer and family members out of more than $600,000 and sentenced to over eight years in prison. Victims included her former law firm boss, clients, even a 91-year-old relative suffering from dementia.

The prosecution alleged Sweeten was motivated by greed and wanted material things and a comfortable lifestyle she would not have had otherwise. In her trial, investigators pointed out that due to her allegations, innocent black men could have been unfairly detained by police during the emotionally charged manhunt—or worse.

2016 

On September 13, 2016, in Jackson, Georgia, 41-year-old rookie police officer Sherry Hall reported a shooting. During her shift, a 6-foot, 250-pound Black man had randomly opened fire on her, piercing her vest; she returned two rounds in self defense. 

In an interview with CBS, Hall said, “For him to have such a disregard to human life really angers me and upsets me. . . . If he’ll do this to an officer, how much more will he do to a citizen on the street?”

A manhunt was launched; law enforcement poured over 600 hours into the investigation. The allegations were gravely serious; months earlier, two unprovoked attacks had taken eight police lives. The intense hunt for the Black man went for ten days as police tore through the state to find him.

Then it came to a sudden stop. Investigators found inconsistencies in Hall’s statements; they confronted her with videos from her cruiser camera. A forensic pathologist determined her wound to be superficial, and not from a bullet. She was fired and charged with multiple felonies, including witness tampering, making false statements and multiple counts of violating her oath as an officer. 

In court, Hall testified, “I don’t recall a whole lot, because I’ve spent two years in therapy trying to suppress it.” She maintained her story about the Black man. 

In 2018, she was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

To this day, we don’t know why she did it. But if it was attention she sought when she reported the Black male assailant--she got it.

2020

On May 21, 2020, in Miami, Florida, 45-year-old Patricia Ripley reported an abduction. Her 9-year-old nonverbal and autistic son, Alejandro, was missing. She knew what had happened to him--but following the legacy of white women before her, pinned the crime on the perfect scapegoat. Two Black men.
Ripley--a self-described White Hispanic woman--told police that two Black men ran her off the road, demanded drugs--and then took her son. Authorities launched a statewide manhunt for the Black men. 

The search stopped suddenly when surveillance video surfaced from the day of the alleged abduction. There were no Black men. Footage showed Ripley pushing Alejandro into a canal. When he began to scream, neighbors came running and rescued him from the water. But his mother wasn’t done. An hour later, she took him to another lake and pushed him in once more. No one there to save him. His body was found in the lake the next morning. 

Patricia Ripley is being held without bail and is facing charges of first-degree murder. She has pled not guilty.