Jailed: Joan Little was transferred Sunday night from the Durham County Jail to the Women's Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina for failing to appear last week to sign bond papers on another charge. Miss Little, 21, did not make an appearance at the clerk of the Supreme Court's office to sign routine bond certification papers on Thursday. One of her attorneys, James Rowan, said Miss Little did not realize that she was being sought by police; she believed she had until Monday to sign the papers. She was arrested in Durham on Sunday.

Joan Little (pronounced "Jo Ann") (born 1953) is a black woman charged for the 1974 murder of Clarence Alligood, a white prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina. Little's trial made her a cause célèbre of the Civil Rights, Feminist, and Anti-death Penalty Movements. She was the first woman in United States history to be acquitted using the defense that she used deadly force to resist sexual assault. Her case has become classic in legal circles as a pioneering instance of the application of scientific jury selection.

On verso: library stamp and newspaper caption with date stamp affixed.

Wire photographs were originally transmitted over phonelines, then later, by satellite. They were first used in the early 1920s. Associated Press became a leader with this. After pigment touch-ups, etc., the print is put into a drum (like a drum scanner). The image gets converted into audio tones that are transmitted. The tones are received and beamed onto photo-sensitive paper. Wire photographs are copies without originals---they are hybrid, transmitted objects. (Britt Salvesen, Curator and Department Head, Photography Department, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, March 30-31, 2022)

This object has the following keywords:

• Civil Rights Movements
• Clarence Alligood
• Durham
• Durham County Jail
• Failure to appear
• Injustice
• Joan Little
• Murder
• North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women
• North Carolina Supreme Court
• Racial Discrimination
• Raleigh
• Rape
• Self defense
• Trials

• Image Dimensions: 9 1/8 x 6 15/16 in. (23.18 x 17.62 cm) Measured by Hudson, Karen
• Sheet Dimensions: 9 7/8 x 7 1/4 in. (25.08 x 18.42 cm) Measured by Hudson, Karen