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theses

This dissertation analyzes the intersections of gender, race and class by exploring crime, punishment, labor and community in New York City and Auburn Prison. “Bad Girls” focuses primarily on African American women while offering comparisons with European immigrant and native-born white women criminals and inmates. Most histories of African American women prisoners privilege white reformers’ views. My dissertation centers the perspectives of the convicts. Additionally, these historical studies present women’s criminal activity primarily as a moral problem; my dissertation argues that crime was a form of work for many black women. It also explores the community, relationships, beliefs and practices that imprisoned women forged to survive their incarceration. In the post-Civil War era, the vast majority of African American women lived in severe poverty. Recognizing that acute social, political, and economic vulnerabilities are race and gender specific, “Bad Girls” argues that efforts to overcome them led many black women to commit crimes in order to survive or support their family. Most of those sent to Auburn were poor New York City residents – including many southern migrants – for whom theft helped meet basic needs. Given black women’s limited access to legitimate work, it is not surprising that some turned to illegal work to sustain themselves, in part or in full. Bad Girls” also examines imprisoned women’s resistance to penal policies and practices. Female inmates established multi-racial, multi-ethnic communities that helped them survive incarceration. Yet African American, European immigrant, and native-born white women still constituted discrete groups with distinct cultural practices. In 1913, Auburn inmates acquired a degree of self-determination following an undercover investigation by Madeleine Doty, a white middle class reformer. As a result of Doty’s expose, inmates were allowed to organize a Prisoner’s League that challenged longstanding and abusive policies. White working-class matrons experienced their efforts as an attack on their position. This struggle between the all-white prison matrons and the mixed-race community of inmates, ultimately, resulted in the disbandment of the League. Still, this history suggests that even as the penitentiary shaped and transformed incarcerated women, so too did incarcerated women shape and transform Auburn prison.

ETD_5556

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Leigh-Anne Francis

doi:10.7282/T3XK8CV4

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.