This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Baker, D. V. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Black Female Executions in Historical Context

Riverside Community College, California

This article examines the systemic oppression of executed Black women from the earliest periods of American history. The most consistent factor in Black female executions throughout U.S. history is criminal justice authorities' executions of Black women largely for challenging gendered and racist exploitation. Colonial and antebellum slavery institutionalized the persecution of slave women, who often retaliated against oppressive brutality by killing White masters. White lynch mobs effectively augmented the legal killing of Black women in postbellum society and lowered Black female execution rates. Reduced to a peonage state in the apartheid of Jim Crow, Black women's crimes of resistance against White brutality paralleled those of slave women decades earlier. And despite the delusional expansion of civil rights and the sovereignty of Black people over the confines of segregation in the modern era, the racialized sexism of American criminal justice has rendered Black women ever more vulnerable to the death penalty.

Key Words: Black females • executions • capital punishment • systemic oppression

Criminal Justice Review, Vol. 33, No. 1, 64-88 (2008)
DOI: 10.1177/0734016808316782


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?