Mapping the Insurgent Margins: An Experiment in Black Feminist Abolitionist Biography

• In Event: The politics of anti-carceral rebellion

Abstract

Dollree Mapp is at once a legal protagonist and an insurrectionist. Once famed, she was also notorious, and has mostly been forgotten. Her own history eludes most historical accounts and is deemed irrelevant in the case history she created. From Supreme Court victor to long-term prisoner, Dolree Mapp, the successful complainant in the U.S. Supreme Court case Mapp v. Ohio, which prohibited the use of evidence illegally obtained (that is, without a warrant) in state criminal court. This paper draws upon legal history, Black feminist theory, carceral/abolitionist thought and the countours of Mapp’s life, to explore the possibilities and limitations of the insurgent positionalities she occupied: gambler, gun owner, smut possessor, recalcitrant arrestee, historic litigant, abuse survivor, domestic guardian, luxe broad, incarcerated intellectual, anticarceral activist, and feminist poet.

Author

• Sarah Haley, Columbia University