U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Unholy Alliances: Working the Tawana Brawley Story

NCJ Number
120434
Author(s)
M Taibbi; A Simms-Phillips
Date Published
1989
Length
408 pages
Annotation
Tawana Brawley, a black teenager in upstate New York, was raped and sodomized in November 1987, allegedly by a gang of white men, and left to die.
Abstract
Tawana was found covered with feces in a Hefty garbage bag. Her hair had been cut off, and racial epithets were written across her torso. She had reportedly been abducted, held captive, and raped repeatedly by a gang of white men. Within days, Tawana's case was taken up by black activists who issued pronouncements that the Brawley case would prove civil rights movement gains were a sham, that New York Governor Mario Cuomo was another Lester Maddox, that U.S. Attorney Rudolph Giuliano was linked to the Mafia, and that the Irish Republican Army and the Ku Klux Klan were implicated in the case. In detailing the case, the authors provide a close-up view of the "unholy alliances" regularly forged between the media and news subjects, examine the underside of the civil rights movement with its false prophets who fan the flames of racial conflict, and discuss the paralyzing effects of reverse racism on the criminal justice system.