A review by drkew
No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity by Sarah Haley

5.0

Haley's research on African American women in Georgia convict camps, chain gangs, and domestic service captivity (paroled women forced into domestic service instead of having their sentences commuted) offers a critical intervention into understandings of gender under Jim Crow. The historic brutality of the carceral state is well-known to many historians but the many techniques of terror and torture inflicted on black women convicts (as opposed to their white female and black male counterparts) is less understood. When we think of violent terror from the late 19th century, we tend to focus our attention on people outside the carceral state (on lynchings, where the vast majority of victims were male). By opening a window onto the violent world of convict leasing, chain gangs, and domestic service Haley joins other scholars like Kali Gross and Talitha LeFlouria in calling for a more comprehensive accounting of American violence.