Marie Scott was a 17-year-old black girl from Wagoner County, Oklahoma, in 1914. After being violently raped by four white males who stormed into her home while she was undressing, she was lynched by a white mob.
On March 31, 1914, four drunken white men drove to a black neighborhood in Wagoner County, Oklahoma, with the intention of sexually assaulting black women. These men broke into the home of Marie Scott, a 17-year-old girl, and sexually assaulted her.
When Marie’s brother heard her screams for help, he grabbed a knife and dashed to her aid. They battled off the four guys, with one of them, Lemuel Pierce, being stabbed to death, according to Marie. She instructed her brother to flee, which he did.
The local sheriff and his deputies apprehended Marie, but no arrests, indictments, or charges were filed against her rapists.
On March 31, 1914, when an infuriated white mob couldn’t find Marie’s brother, they hauled her from her detention cell, kicking and screaming, and hung the 17-year-old sexually abused minor from a nearby telephone pole.
Marie’s brother was never apprehended or charged with the rapist’s death.
During the Jim Crow era, the life of a Black woman was always threatened this way. Despite the fact that she was no longer a chattel slave, the white man continued to use, mistreat, and discard her body and sexuality at his whim, with no repercussions.
White men’s sexual assaults on Black women and girls were routinely accepted and excused by the same communities that lynched and legally murdered Black males for the most minor charges of sexual contact with white women.
Given this background, Marie Scott may have been one of the numerous Black women targeted for sexual violence by white men who knew they would face no repercussions for wreaking havoc in her neighborhood. Marie Scott was murdered by a mob, whether she responded in self-defense or was shielded by her brother. Marie Scott was murdered by a mob, whether she responded in self-defense or was shielded by her brother, and was denied her right to be free from rape, fear, and racial terror.
We remember the turbulence, sorrow, and grievous wrongs that our forefathers and mothers endured. Young queen, may you rest in power.