“Respectable” Black Women Fought Mass Incarceration | Black Agenda Report

“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

More Stories

Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
Reparations for African People
12 Aug 2022
Kamm Howard is Executive Director of Reparations United. He recently attended the reparations and racial healing summit in Accra, Ghana. He joins us from Chicago to discuss the campaign to secure…
Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
Nancy Pelosi, White Supremacy, and China
10 Aug 2022
White supremacist arrogance was the order of the day when Nancy Pelosi ignored a red line set by the Chinese government and visited Taiwan.
Editors, The Black Agenda Review
ESSAY: Women in Prison: How We Are, Assata Shakur, 1978
10 Aug 2022
Assata Shakur exposes the conditions faced by incarcerated Black women in a powerful 1978 essay.
Danny Haiphong, BAR Contributing Editor
For the American Empire, Hypocrisy and War Go Hand in Hand
10 Aug 2022
American exceptionalist hypocrisy was on full display during Nancy Pelosi's provocative trip to Taiwan.
Raymond Nat Turner, BAR poet-in-residence
Crazy Like a Woodfox
10 Aug 2022
Crazy as a Woodfox...