Maggie and Alma Howze, believed to be 20 and 16 years old, were sexually manipulated by a white traveling dentist back in 1918 in Shubata, Mississippi. The dentist ended up getting the sisters pregnant and kept them for his sick desires. The dentist also had black laborers working around his property,Major and Andrew Clark (20 & 15yrs), one of which caught the eye of Maggie.

The dentist caught wind of the courting between Maggie and Major, so he confronted them. Days later, the dentist ended up dead. The town immediately thought Maggie, Alma, along with Major and Andrew, murdered the dentist. So one of the black men was captured and tortured via vice grips on his genitals , forcing him to confess to the crime. All four would be strung up on bridge by a white mob.

It is believed that Maggie put up a fight not initially dying once she was hanged with the rest. She would cry out that she didn’t kill the dentist and shouldn’t be lynched. Someone from the crowd threw a monkey wrench, knocking her teeth out and yelling how hard it was to kill the “big black one.” It would be found out later that a white man who wanted revenge for the dentist sleeping with his wife, actually killed him.

Through my art, I am reclaiming this moment in history as “The Strangest Fruit of Autonomy,” as Maggie and Alma became victim to the white patriarchal gaze, locking them in a death cage.