Colored Amazons

Description:

"Colored Amazons is a groundbreaking historical analysis of the crimes, prosecution, and incarceration of black women in Philadelphia at the turn of the twentieth century. Kali N. Gross reconstructs black women's crimes and their representations in popular press accounts and within the discourses of urban and penal reform. Most importantly, she considers what these crimes signified about the experiences, ambitions, and frustrations of the marginalized women who committed them. Gross argues that the perpetrators and the state jointly constructed black female crime. For some women, crime functioned as a means to attain personal and social autonomy. For the state, black female crime and its representations effectively galvanized and justified a host of urban reform initiatives that reaffirmed white, middle-class authority."--Jacket.

subjects: African American criminals,  Discrimination in criminal justice administration,  Crime and race,  Public opinion,  African American women,  Social conditions,  Female offenders,  History,  Criminalité et race,  Discrimination dans l'administration de la justice,  Conditions sociales,  Criminels noirs américains,  Criminelles,  Opinion publique,  Diskriminierung,  Histoire,  Öffentliche Meinung,  Kriminalität,  Noires américaines,  Weibliche Schwarze,  Noires americaines,  Kriminalita˜t,  Criminels noirs americains,  O˜ffentliche Meinung,  Criminalite et race,  Pennsylvania, history

Places: Pennsylvania,  Philadelphia