Sarah Haley
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627595
- eISBN:
- 9781469627618
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627595.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
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 ...
More
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 book makes the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class central to the history of convict labor and Jim Crow modernity. No Mercy Here incorporates speculative historical narrative to highlight questions about black women’s interior lives and draws upon a wide array of archival documents to uncover black women’s experiences in local and state carceral institutions including mixed gender and all-women’s convict lease camps, chain gangs, and state prison farms. This study encompasses an analysis of a broad range of carceral technologies including criminalizing discourses, surveillance, arrest and prosecution, visual culture, reform legislation, and gendered racial terror. No Mercy Here examines black women’s organizational protest against convict leasing and examines the blues as a black feminist expressive culture within a black radical tradition, prefiguring the insights of critical race theory and asserting a black feminist abolition democracy through vivid and elaborate theorizations of racial, gendered, sexual, and economic justice and a world beyond prisons.Less
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 book makes the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class central to the history of convict labor and Jim Crow modernity. No Mercy Here incorporates speculative historical narrative to highlight questions about black women’s interior lives and draws upon a wide array of archival documents to uncover black women’s experiences in local and state carceral institutions including mixed gender and all-women’s convict lease camps, chain gangs, and state prison farms. This study encompasses an analysis of a broad range of carceral technologies including criminalizing discourses, surveillance, arrest and prosecution, visual culture, reform legislation, and gendered racial terror. No Mercy Here examines black women’s organizational protest against convict leasing and examines the blues as a black feminist expressive culture within a black radical tradition, prefiguring the insights of critical race theory and asserting a black feminist abolition democracy through vivid and elaborate theorizations of racial, gendered, sexual, and economic justice and a world beyond prisons.
Simon Balto
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781469649597
- eISBN:
- 9781469649610
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469649597.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn ...
More
In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn of many local whites, including members of the city’s political leadership and police department, who generally sympathized with white Chicagoans and viewed black migrants as a problem population. During Chicago’s Red Summer riot, patterns of extraordinary brutality, negligence, and discriminatory policing emerged to shocking effect. Those patterns shifted in subsequent decades, but the overall realities of a racially discriminatory police system persisted.
In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans’ lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.Less
In July 1919, an explosive race riot forever changed Chicago. For years, black southerners had been leaving the South as part of the Great Migration. Their arrival in Chicago drew the ire and scorn of many local whites, including members of the city’s political leadership and police department, who generally sympathized with white Chicagoans and viewed black migrants as a problem population. During Chicago’s Red Summer riot, patterns of extraordinary brutality, negligence, and discriminatory policing emerged to shocking effect. Those patterns shifted in subsequent decades, but the overall realities of a racially discriminatory police system persisted.
In this history of Chicago from 1919 to the rise and fall of Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon Balto narrates the evolution of racially repressive policing in black neighborhoods as well as how black citizen-activists challenged that repression. Balto demonstrates that punitive practices by and inadequate protection from the police were central to black Chicagoans’ lives long before the late-century "wars" on crime and drugs. By exploring the deeper origins of this toxic system, Balto reveals how modern mass incarceration, built upon racialized police practices, emerged as a fully formed machine of profoundly antiblack subjugation.
Robert T. Chase
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653570
- eISBN:
- 9781469653594
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653570.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were ...
More
In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as “slaves of the state” and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.Less
In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as “slaves of the state” and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.
Sarah Haley
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781469627595
- eISBN:
- 9781469627618
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469627595.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The introduction begins with an appeal by Lula Walker for leniency on behalf of her niece who was a survivor of domestic violence, which exposes the role of racial patriarchy in structuring criminal ...
More
The introduction begins with an appeal by Lula Walker for leniency on behalf of her niece who was a survivor of domestic violence, which exposes the role of racial patriarchy in structuring criminal punishment. The introduction provides an overview of the key themes, concepts, topics of analysis and chapters to follow.Less
The introduction begins with an appeal by Lula Walker for leniency on behalf of her niece who was a survivor of domestic violence, which exposes the role of racial patriarchy in structuring criminal punishment. The introduction provides an overview of the key themes, concepts, topics of analysis and chapters to follow.
James Gacek and Richard Sparks
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781447345701
- eISBN:
- 9781447346579
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447345701.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
The expansion and diffusion of the ‘carceral state’ – understood here as the set of institutional configurations and actors that prioritise punishment, containment, detention, and/or incarceration as ...
More
The expansion and diffusion of the ‘carceral state’ – understood here as the set of institutional configurations and actors that prioritise punishment, containment, detention, and/or incarceration as a means of treating poverty and marginalisation – is a looming contemporary concern. It seems probable that confluent interests from the commercial, governmental, and civil society sectors will, in the absence of robust interrogation, continue to extend the scope of penal supervision in the lives and communities of already marginalised people. Drawing upon a wide range of literature our chapter critically queries the pairing of punishment and the marketisation of criminal justice. For example, is the extension of electronic monitoring simply a convenient use of a handy technology? Or does it involve the inadequately examined delegation of the state’s power to punish? We call into question the troubling relationship between claims of market-as-accountability versus democratic decision-making. By questioning the interpenetration of these interests, our intention is to re-ignite public conversation concerning the legitimacy of current penal developments and to call attention to some alternative paths.Less
The expansion and diffusion of the ‘carceral state’ – understood here as the set of institutional configurations and actors that prioritise punishment, containment, detention, and/or incarceration as a means of treating poverty and marginalisation – is a looming contemporary concern. It seems probable that confluent interests from the commercial, governmental, and civil society sectors will, in the absence of robust interrogation, continue to extend the scope of penal supervision in the lives and communities of already marginalised people. Drawing upon a wide range of literature our chapter critically queries the pairing of punishment and the marketisation of criminal justice. For example, is the extension of electronic monitoring simply a convenient use of a handy technology? Or does it involve the inadequately examined delegation of the state’s power to punish? We call into question the troubling relationship between claims of market-as-accountability versus democratic decision-making. By questioning the interpenetration of these interests, our intention is to re-ignite public conversation concerning the legitimacy of current penal developments and to call attention to some alternative paths.
Max Felker-Kantor
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646831
- eISBN:
- 9781469646855
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646831.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential ...
More
When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead intensifying its power.
In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.Less
When the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts erupted in violent protest in August 1965, the uprising drew strength from decades of pent-up frustration with employment discrimination, residential segregation, and poverty. But the more immediate grievance was anger at the racist and abusive practices of the Los Angeles Police Department. Yet in the decades after Watts, the LAPD resisted all but the most limited demands for reform made by activists and residents of color, instead intensifying its power.
In Policing Los Angeles, Max Felker-Kantor narrates the dynamic history of policing, anti-police abuse movements, race, and politics in Los Angeles from the 1965 Watts uprising to the 1992 Los Angeles rebellion. Using the explosions of two large-scale uprisings in Los Angeles as bookends, Felker-Kantor highlights the racism at the heart of the city's expansive police power through a range of previously unused and rare archival sources. His book is a gripping and timely account of the transformation in police power, the convergence of interests in support of law and order policies, and African American and Mexican American resistance to police violence after the Watts uprising.
Garrett Felber
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653822
- eISBN:
- 9781469653846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653822.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Describes how Those Who Know Don’t Say uses the NOI as a vehicle to explore forgotten sites and forms of Black struggle that confronted the carceral state during the mid-twentieth century. ...
More
Describes how Those Who Know Don’t Say uses the NOI as a vehicle to explore forgotten sites and forms of Black struggle that confronted the carceral state during the mid-twentieth century. Reconsidering the place and scope of the NOI within the history of the Black Freedom Struggle in this way expands the boundaries of Black liberation struggles by revealing a more dynamic freedom movement in which objectives and strategies were always contested and debated within communities themselves, changing who we see as political theorists and agents of change, and expanding our spatial lens to include prison yards and courtrooms as sites of activism.Less
Describes how Those Who Know Don’t Say uses the NOI as a vehicle to explore forgotten sites and forms of Black struggle that confronted the carceral state during the mid-twentieth century. Reconsidering the place and scope of the NOI within the history of the Black Freedom Struggle in this way expands the boundaries of Black liberation struggles by revealing a more dynamic freedom movement in which objectives and strategies were always contested and debated within communities themselves, changing who we see as political theorists and agents of change, and expanding our spatial lens to include prison yards and courtrooms as sites of activism.
Max Felker-Kantor
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781469646831
- eISBN:
- 9781469646855
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469646831.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
Between the 1960s and 1990s, the police power in Los Angeles intensified. Police power was not incidental or supplemental, but constitutive of postwar city politics and authority. The introduction ...
More
Between the 1960s and 1990s, the police power in Los Angeles intensified. Police power was not incidental or supplemental, but constitutive of postwar city politics and authority. The introduction outlines the central question of the book: how and why this could happen after the Watts uprising of 1965 exposed the racism at the heart of the police power, decades of pressure from an active anti–police abuse movement, and under the twenty-year rule of a liberal administration that sought to control and regulate police behavior. Tracing the racism at the heart of the police power reveals the historical consequences of expanded police authority. Relying on the police to manage social problems of crime, violence, and drugs led to disciplinary practices of surveillance, harassment, and arrest that criminalized and excluded African American and Latino/a residents. In the process, as antipolice activists pointed out and struggled against, the police often deemed residents of color as not only potential threats to the public welfare but also unfit for full benefits of social membership in American society. Police practices thereby produced racialized definitions of criminality and enforced the city’s hierarchical racial order. As a result, the struggle over policing structured and exacerbated deep cleavages in American cities over race, citizenship, politics, and state power.Less
Between the 1960s and 1990s, the police power in Los Angeles intensified. Police power was not incidental or supplemental, but constitutive of postwar city politics and authority. The introduction outlines the central question of the book: how and why this could happen after the Watts uprising of 1965 exposed the racism at the heart of the police power, decades of pressure from an active anti–police abuse movement, and under the twenty-year rule of a liberal administration that sought to control and regulate police behavior. Tracing the racism at the heart of the police power reveals the historical consequences of expanded police authority. Relying on the police to manage social problems of crime, violence, and drugs led to disciplinary practices of surveillance, harassment, and arrest that criminalized and excluded African American and Latino/a residents. In the process, as antipolice activists pointed out and struggled against, the police often deemed residents of color as not only potential threats to the public welfare but also unfit for full benefits of social membership in American society. Police practices thereby produced racialized definitions of criminality and enforced the city’s hierarchical racial order. As a result, the struggle over policing structured and exacerbated deep cleavages in American cities over race, citizenship, politics, and state power.
Garrett Felber
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653822
- eISBN:
- 9781469653846
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653822.003.0007
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This epilogue connects mid-century Black nationalist anti-carceral activism and the state’s response to the longer history of punitive policing and Islamaphobia.
This epilogue connects mid-century Black nationalist anti-carceral activism and the state’s response to the longer history of punitive policing and Islamaphobia.
Robert T. Chase
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653570
- eISBN:
- 9781469653594
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653570.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
The introduction offers a historical intervention to a number of critical narratives surrounding the advent of the carceral state, prisoners’ rights and radicalism, and mass incarceration.
The introduction offers a historical intervention to a number of critical narratives surrounding the advent of the carceral state, prisoners’ rights and radicalism, and mass incarceration.
Catherine O. Jacquet
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- January 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781469653860
- eISBN:
- 9781469653884
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469653860.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, Social History
The epilogue focuses on the evolution of antirape efforts in the 1980s and beyond. Black feminist analysis had an increasingly significant impact as the antirape movement diversified and activists ...
More
The epilogue focuses on the evolution of antirape efforts in the 1980s and beyond. Black feminist analysis had an increasingly significant impact as the antirape movement diversified and activists appealed for an intersectional framework for justice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, women of color were at the forefront of antiviolence activism, insisting on an approach that ensured the safety of survivors without strengthening the oppressive carceral state.Less
The epilogue focuses on the evolution of antirape efforts in the 1980s and beyond. Black feminist analysis had an increasingly significant impact as the antirape movement diversified and activists appealed for an intersectional framework for justice. At the turn of the twenty-first century, women of color were at the forefront of antiviolence activism, insisting on an approach that ensured the safety of survivors without strengthening the oppressive carceral state.