The fashion designer and matriarch of music royalty details a humiliating arrest she says was laced with racial malice.
Tina Knowles, mother of Beyoncé, has revealed a traumatic 1974 incident in which she was subjected to a degrading police strip search after a minor traffic violation in Galveston, Texas.
Knowles, then 20, was arrested for riding barefoot on a dirt bike during her “hippie phase.” Instead of a routine bail, officers allegedly paraded her through her neighborhood in a police car before conducting a full strip and cavity search. “It was the most humiliating, horrible thing,” she recalled. “When it was over, I put my clothes back on, trying to put an armour of dignity over me too.”
She claims the same officer had a history of racism, calling her friends “monkeys” and targeting her family with frequent traffic stops. The incident, she says, was meant to shame her—but the shame, she now realizes, belonged solely to the officers involved.