No Mercy Here

Abstract No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity provides an analysis of the role of gender ideology in the development of southern punishment after the Civil War, arguing that the carceral state circulated and entrenched ideas about gender that were critical to the making of Jim Crow. This book reveals how the criminal legal system crafted, reinforced, and required black female deviance as part of the broader constitution of Jim Crow modernity premised upon the devaluation of black life broadly. A study of imprisoned black women’s historical lives, experiences of violence and labor exploitation, practices of refusal and resistance, and visions of freedom and abolition, this…