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


  • Maps of tectonic plates in around Africa
    Laith Marouf
    Palestine is in Africa, and Arabic Peoples are Africans
    13 Mar 2024
    Palestinian people and African/Black people share more than a common struggle. They share a history dating back thousands of years.
  • Black Alliance for Peace Haiti/Americas Team
    BAP Backgrounder: Haiti Behind the Headlines
    13 Mar 2024
    The Black Alliance for Peace lays out the reality of the ongoing crisis in Haiti, rejecting the mainstream narrative of a crisis of "gangs".
  • MOLEGHAF
    MOLEGHAF Statement: A call for revolutionary forces to assemble
    13 Mar 2024
    MOLEGHAF calls for organization and unity among all revolutionary forces in Haiti to combat the capitalist glass and imperialist forces causing the ongoing crisis on the island.
  • Abayomi Azikiwe
    African Americans and the Cold War from Civil Rights to Black Power
    13 Mar 2024
    The end of the Second Imperialist War (World War II) did not usher in the end of colonialism and oppression for Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. The resistance of Pan-African movements…
  • Jeb Sprague , Kit Klarenburg
    Secret cable: CIA orchestrated Haiti’s 2004 coup
    13 Mar 2024
    A classified diplomatic cable obtained by The Grayzone reveals the role of a veteran CIA officer in violently overthrowing Haiti’s popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 2004.
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us