Searching for Jane Crow
Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block
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- Vorbestellbar
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- Erwartet am 11. Aug. 2026
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- 14,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
A Ms. Magazine "Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2026" Pick
Gives voice to the Black women whose lives were devastated by the carceral system and sheds powerful light on its slavery-based roots to transform how we think about mass incarceration
Historian Talitha L. LeFlouria centers Black women at the core of a fresh argument: that the system of mass incarceration was established as protection for the institution of slavery and the profits of enslavers and that this legacy continues today.
For centuries, Black women in America have experienced extreme rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the nation’s jails and prisons, yet their experiences have often been overlooked in favor of Black men’s.
Arguing that the merger between profit and punishment continues to keep Black people bound, LeFlouria traces the connection between enslavement and incarceration, revealing how they have always been intertwined—from the domestic slave trade of 1810-1865, when an estimated one million people were incarcerated in privately owned slave jails, to the post-Civil War era when Black people were enslaved through new systems of state-sponsored mass incarceration, and through to today.
Using archival sources and personal testimonies, LeFlouria tells a new origin story of mass incarceration with the stories of numerous Black women throughout history, including:
· Delia Garlic, who was incarcerated in a slave jail and later sold to a sheriff at the height of the domestic slave trade
· Eliza Purdy, who was jailed and sold to the highest bidder a year after the Civil War ended, and
· Susan Burton, who was commodified and trafficked through a 20th-century cell block, much like an enslaved person on the auction block 200 years prior.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Historian LeFlouria (Chained in Silence) shows in this eye-opening account that Black women's oft-overlooked experiences reveal deep connective currents across eras of Black "carceral" subjugation. While it's commonplace to consider mass incarceration as having its roots in the 1970s war on drugs, LeFlouria argues that "systems of incarceration and slavery have worked together" to "keep Black women bound" for centuries. LeFlouria surfaces startling examples that emphasize the extent to which "the plantation and the... jail" worked hand-in-glove, such as an account from an enslaved woman who recollected that, each time she was auctioned, she had to spend time incarcerated in terrible conditions in a local jail; as well as accounts of free Black women who ended up jailed, and subsequently sold into slavery as punishment, after having broken draconian laws against things like "traveling without... papers" or "socializing with an enslaved person." LeFleuria goes on to spotlight how Black women, like Black men, were jailed during the Jim Crow era and beyond so that corporations could extract their prison labor, while noting the uniquely disastrous impact such incarceration can have for Black women and families, as women prisoners can end up trafficked for sex and a mother's incarceration often leads to her children being sent to foster care. It's a damning look at the racialized nature of the U.S. prison system.
