Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire

“Respectable” Black Women Fought Mass Incarceration
Black Agenda Radio with Nellie Bailey and Glen Ford
02 Mar 2020
🖨️ Print Article

Back in the days when 90 percent of southern prison inmates were Black, socially conservative Black clubwomen fought for prison reform, believing that “putting Black women in jail was hurting the Black community,” said Nikki Brown, professor of history at the University of New Orleans. The National Association of Colored Women, who practiced what we today call “respectability” politics, played a key role in creating alternatives to incarceration, said Brown, who authored an article titled, “Keeping Black Motherhood Out of Prison: Prison Reform and Woman-Saving in the Progressive Era.”

Mass Black Incarceration

Related Podcasts

Involuntary Servitude in the Prison System
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Involuntary Servitude in the Prison System
24 June 2022
Savannah Eldrige is the founder of Coaliton to Abolish Slave
White Capitalist Law vs “Uncontrollable Blackness”
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
White Capitalist Law vs “Uncontrollable Blackness”
01 September 2020
The United States “criminalizes Black Americans,” but Black men “are not looking to be controlled” by this racist system, said Douglas
 Getting Out the Word: #PrisonsKill
Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley and Glen Ford
Getting Out the Word: #PrisonsKill
25 August 2020
The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, IWOC, “is committed to the militant organizing of prisoners that takes its leadership and focus from

More Stories


  • Raymond Nat Turner
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Raymond Nat Turner, Upsurge NYC and Black Agenda Report
    05 Apr 2024
    BAR Poet-in-Residence, Raymond Nat Turner, joins us from New York City to talk about his work and an upcoming performance with his group, Upsurge New York City.
  • Organization for the Victory of the People in Guyana
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Guyana is an Imperialist Target
    05 Apr 2024
    Gerald Perreira of Organization for the Victory of the People in Guyana joins us to discuss the long running territorial dispute with neighboring Venezuela and the increasing activity of U.S. in the…
  • Destruction of Al Shifa hospital
    Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    Israel and the U.S. are Gangster States
    03 Apr 2024
    Any sign of even tiny opposition is enough to send Israel into a frenzy of bloodletting. Hospital attacks, murders of aid workers, violations of the sovereignty of embassies, are all par for the…
  • Palestine partition
    Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    STATEMENT: UN Palestine Commission Partition recommendation – Statement from the Arab Higher Committee, 6 February 1948
    03 Apr 2024
    The statement on the UN Partition of Palestine by the Arab Higher Committee is a reminder of the sordid history of the U.S. in the expropriation of land and the attempted ethnic cleansing of the…
  • Ann Garrison, BAR Contributing Editor
    Eric Nshimiye, Another Rwandan American Facing Trial in Another Rwandan Witch Hunt
    03 Apr 2024
    The totalitarian state of Rwanda is guilty of many forms of transnational repression, including the lawfare exemplified in the case of Eric Nshimiye.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us