Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South

"The essays in this book bring nuance to a range of conversations about carceral statebuilding. . . . All of the essays offer well-researched, complex methodological and topical interventions that highlight the racialized implications of Jim Crow governance." --Journal of African American History "Crime and Punishment in the Jim Crow South brings fresh insights to our understanding of the development of racial disparities in law enforcement, incarceration, and capital punishment." --North Carolina Historical Review "These essays provide a nuanced and necessary picture of the racialized nature of southern law enforcement in the Jim Crow era beyond the common tropes of convict lease, the chain gang, and police complicity in local lynchings." --Journal of American History "Thoroughly researched, cogently argued, and well written. With its judicious blend of established and rising young scholars working at the cutting-edge of carceral studies, this breaks new ground."--Claudrena N. Harold, author of The Rise and Fall of the Garvey Movement in the Urban South, 19181942 "Given how often and how easily crime and punishment in America today is framed in terms of southern history--the 'New Jim Crow'--it is timely and important to have these deeply-researched, carefully argued essays to help us think in new ways about the connections between the Souths past and the nations present."Joseph Crespino, author of Atticus Finch, The Biography: Harper Lee, Her Father, and the Making of an American Icon

Amy Louise Wood is a professor of history at Illinois State University. She is the author of Lynching and Spectacle: Witnessing Racial Violence in America, 18901940. Natalie J. Ring is an associate professor of history at University of Texas at Dallas. She is the author of The Problem South: Region, Empire, and the New Liberal State, 18801930.

CoverTitleCopyrightContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction / Amy Louise Wood and Natalie J. RingPart I: Crime1. The Trials of George Doyle: Race and Policing in Jim Crow New Orleans / K. Stephen Prince2. "Many People 'Colored' Have Come to the Homicide Office": Police Investigations of African American Homicides in Memphis, 1920-1945 / Brandon T. Jett3. Forced Confessions: Police Torture and the African American Struggle for Civil Rights in the 1930s South / Silvan Niedermeier4. The South's Sin City: White Crime and the Limits of Law and Order in Phenix City, Alabama / Tammy IngramPart II: Punishment5. Testimonial Incapacity and Criminal Defendants in the South / Pippa Holloway6. Sewing and Spinning for the State: Incarcerated Black Female Garment Workers in the Jim Crow South / Talitha L. LeFlouria7. Cole Blease's Pardoning Pen: State Power and Penal Reform in South Carolina / Amy Louise Wood8. Hanging, the Electric Chair, and Death Penalty Reform in the Early Twentieth-Century South / Vivien Miller9. The Making of the Modern Death Penalty in Jim Crow North Carolins / Seth KotchContributorsIndex