From Chains to State Prisons: Chain Gangs and Women's Incarceration in the American South, 1900-1930

• In Event: Historical Perspectives on Crime and Punishment

Abstract

This paper examines the rise of state prisons for women in the American South. At the turn of the twentieth century, southern states gradually abolished convict leasing and started sentencing people to hard labor on chain gangs or terms in newly constructed state prisons for women. Convict leasing had been a dominant, profitable form of punishment since the 1870s, and states would lease out incarcerated people to private companies and individuals. Prisoners had worked in a range of industries, manufacturing, and agriculture, enduring dangerous and deadly conditions. The paper will examine end of convict leasing and the punishment that replaced it, paying particular attention to the ways Black women were incarcerated during this transition from convict leasing to state women’s prisons. Emancipation marked the end of slavery in America, but new forms of captivity and unfreedom emerged. Drawing on research from state archives and historical newspapers, the paper will draw connections among previously separate bodies of scholarship by knitting together histories of race, gender, labor, and punishment. The paper concludes that the incarceration of Black women reveals as much about the state policing property, behavior, freedom, and morality, as it does about trends in labor, crime, and punishment.

Author

• Bonnie Ernst, Indiana University Bloomington