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Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South

Talitha L Leflouria

4.30 · Rating details · 47 ratings · 9 reviews

In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its rapidly growing population of prisoners available for hire. The resulting convict leasing system ensnared not only men but also African American women, who were forced to labor in camps and factories to make profits for private investors. In this vivid work of history, Talitha L. LeFlouria draws from a rich array of primary ...more

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Paperback, 280 pages

Published March 15th 2016 by University of North Carolina Press (first published April 1st 2015)

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Jun 15, 2016 Nancy Oakes rated it it was amazing

Shelves: african-american-history, history, history-usa, nonfiction

While a very tough book to read in terms of the human factor, the relevance of this story to our own time cannot be understated. As the author notes at the end of this book,

"Today black women are still afflicted by the social, political and economic vices that predisposed them to arrest, conviction and incarceration in the past...In order to better understand the modern carceral state and the complex relationship black women have with it, we must confront the past and listen even when it seems While a very tough book to read in terms of the human factor, the relevance of this story to our own time cannot be understated. As the author notes at the end of this book,

"Today black women are still afflicted by the social, political and economic vices that predisposed them to arrest, conviction and incarceration in the past...In order to better understand the modern carceral state and the complex relationship black women have with it, we must confront the past and listen even when it seems to be silent."

There are at least four main issues that permeate this book and which continue to resonate over more than a century: gender, race, crime, and punishment; add resistance and you get a good feel for where this book will take you. In this study, the author also looks at African-American women in the "carceral state" and how as bound women they were affected by the ongoing assertion of white supremacy and control in the post-emancipation "New South." This book reveals, analyzes and most thoroughly discusses the above-mentioned contemporary "social, political and economic" factors while allowing some of these women's voices to be heard after more than a century of silence. As the author notes, her work is "chiefly invested in rebuilding the historical viewpoint of the unwaged, bound black female worker."

Don't expect a history for the masses sort of thing here. Chained in Silence is an academic monograph and a solid work of history in which the author offers her arguments, supports them with personal accounts, recorded data, and other research in the field. She then provides in-depth analysis to make her case. In some areas her work is hampered by lack of data, but she makes this very clear in the telling. She also realizes that there is much more work to be done and offers topics for future researchers. At the same time, she makes this book very approachable for readers like myself who believe that the best history is told from the perspective of those whose voices never quite seem to make it into the historical record. This book, for lack of a better way to say it, is just brilliant and deserves widespread attention.

there's more at my reading journal if anyone's interested.
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Mar 26, 2019 Clifton J Means rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Mass incarceration has entered into the collective consciousness of Americans over the last decade with the help of works like Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow’ and Ava DuVernay’s documentary film, ‘The 13th’. The problem of mass incarceration, however, has largely been viewed through the prism of black men. Talitha LeFlouria Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South brings attention to the undervalued role black women have played in the exploitation of the prison Mass incarceration has entered into the collective consciousness of Americans over the last decade with the help of works like Michelle Alexander’s ‘The New Jim Crow’ and Ava DuVernay’s documentary film, ‘The 13th’. The problem of mass incarceration, however, has largely been viewed through the prism of black men. Talitha LeFlouria Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South brings attention to the undervalued role black women have played in the exploitation of the prison industrial complex from its inception. LeFlouria’s research is based on the post Civil War Georgia economy into the early 20th century and the unique ways it utilities convict leasing and chain gangs to achieve modernization. LeFloria particularly highlights the intersection of gender, race, and class--and the ways in which Georgia masculinized black women by assigning them to the same labor as men; arguing that the role black women played in the modernization of the Georgian economy has been understudied. LeFlouria argues that the ways black female prisoners were exploited to modernize Georgia’s economy differed from the ways the South built its economy in slavery. LeFlouria argues that reproductive labor was an asset in the antebellum period because black women's bodies served as factory-like machines to fuel the slave supply, where in the prison system those same babies represented economic disruptions and opened black women to sexual abuse and their offspring to abuses ranging from abandonment to infanticide.

LeFlouria begins the text with the strong personal stories of black female prisoners. These accounts display vivid and disturbing accounts of the hegemonic devices used to control black female bodies---especially sexual violence. Particularly striking was the story of Mary Turner, who was lynched at 8 months pregnant for making ‘unwise remarks’ about her husbands lynching. Her pregnant body was cut open and after her child was born alive and skull crushed (pg 30). This typified the new role of reproductive labor in the Jim Crow south and the economic responsibility of black offspring. Also important to LeFlouria thesis of black skilled female labor in the building of the southern economy was the story of Matte Crawford. Mattie Crawford sentenced to life in 1896 for killing her abusive stepfather. Crawford was noted for having superior strength--which was also a way of masculinizing black women and rendering their womanhood invisible--and ultimately became a blacksmith. Despite the privilege this skill wrought her within the prison itself, she was still unable to profit from it as a free person and had her skill limited to exploitive labor. Crawford is an example of the ways some black female conflicts resisted and even defied gendered roles within a hegemonic system that still exploited them and ignored their right to exist as women.

Also, LeFlouria examines the ways in which black women's bodies were devalued in convict leasing camps such as the Old Town Plantation, and Camp Heardmont. She highlights how blacks in these camps lived under horrendous conditions and how resistance was punished with sexual violence at the hands of white men. These camps were also places where black women were put to hard labor, lest their bodies be wasted on ‘light duty’. These practices were undergirded by a racialized and gendered pseudo-science that diagnosed blacks as prone to ‘criminality’. This racialized dehumanization allowed Georgia to lease black female convicts out to private institutions and allow brutal abuses to take place with impunity and regard only for the economic benefits it brought the state--which, at its height practice in the early twentieth century, allowed southern states that utilized it to recover 267 percent of operating cost and become national leaders in the production of iron and coal (pg. 74). This evidence backs LeFlouria argument that convict leasing served to help rebuild a southern economy that had now lost its primary labor force in the abolition of slaves. LeFlouria clearly acknowledges that convict labor was re-purposed white supremacy at the expense of black bodies, but argues that calling it ‘slavery by another name’ oversimplified the ways prison labor utilized black labor and the different ways dehumanization played out along racial, class and gender lines.

One of the ways these divisions play out are in the Georgia prison system where, from its inception, the convict leasing system was unisex. It is in this system where black women work a wide range of occupations, which build the Georgia economy and enhance the objectives of white supremacy while simultaneously challenging gendered stereotypes about the limitations of female labor. This exploitation continued through the chain gangs, which were a form of ‘reform’ to ‘free’ black prisoners from the abuses of private employers. LeFlouria highlights how this simply represented a repurposing of abuse to the state. Black misdemeanant women were now forced to labor by building roads, harvesting turpentine, and laboring in various public works projects’--critical to the modernization of the Georgia state economy (pg. 19). LeFlouria, however, does not speak about black women as only products of exploitation, but is sure to highlight the personhood of these black women and the various ways in which they determined to resist sexual violence and exploitative labor. Although their efforts were subdued, often with violence, resistance efforts speak to the reality that black women did not ‘accept’ their fate and found ways to subvert white power structures. As noted in the case of Mammie Crawford, the wide range of occupations shared by black women in the unisex Georgia system allowed black women opportunities in the ‘New South’, not otherwise afforded them in the antebellum period. At the same time, the opportunities this afforded capitalist to justify assigning black women to jobs that disregarded their womanhood and allowed for the further justification of the unjust practice of black criminalization to feed the prison labor system. Therefore, the achievement black women secured through asserting their individual merit, where in turn used against them to imprison them without due process.

In conclusion, given the resurgence of discourse around mass incarceration and its impact on marginalised communities, LeFlouria work reminds us to remember the ways in which these conversations ignore the contributions and exploitation of black women. In addition, as was the case with the ‘reforms’ of the chain gangs, we must recognize the ways in which modern reforms may serve as convenient models to repurpose oppression in a democracy that significantly utilized prison labor to grow the southern economy in the late 19th and early 20th century and explore the ways in which reforms may prioritize the economy today--and ultimately, how does that interact with race, class and gender in ways that reaffirm hegemonic institutions and ideas of both racism and patriarchy.
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Oct 05, 2015 Elizabeth Headrick rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Painful, excruciating, difficult to read but absolutely necessary. This isn't taught in American history classes and it very well should be.

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Sep 08, 2019 Karen rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: politics-ethics-philosophy

Well researched book about female incarceration in post civil war south. While there are few revelations from the prisoners themselves (because of illiteracy presumably), the author has done an in depth search of prison, court and other records to detail the inhumane treatment of mostly African American women convicts.

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Sep 20, 2016 Luke rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: history, justice

Tough read as this is mostly stringing together accounts of brutality to women convicts in Georgia as indentured labor switches post-civil-war from slavery to the 13th-amendment-allowed "slavery in case of crime". Adds some to the idea that Georgia was able to rapidly industrialize and modernize through leased convicts and chain gangs. The author gives women agency by showing that Georgia's gender-mixed approach to these institutions gave women convicts opportunity to perform skilled labor ...more

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Mar 27, 2016 Erica rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Georgia history is required for all graduating high school students. Most schools teach the Civil War at least 3-times in the course of High School History. This should be required reading.

I knew the State's resources were built on the backs of slaves. It was news to me, however, the degree to which explicit profit was to be made on the backs of freed Black women - & the disparity between Alabama & Georgia's practices. This book discomforted. In a good way. Georgia, know your history!

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Jan 20, 2015 Kidada rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This excellent book illuminates state violence against African American women. Examining women in unthinkably violent and exploitative convict leasing camps and penal factories, LeFlouria reveals the role race and gender informed the economies of the New South.

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Nov 01, 2015 Samuel Roberts added it · review of another edition

This is a fantastic (and deeply affecting) book examining the intersections of race, gender, labor, and punishment in the Post-Emancipation (New) South. Looking forward to using this book in the classroom.

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