No Mercy Here: Gender, Punishment, and the Making of Jim Crow Modernity
by Sarah Haley
The University of North Carolina Press, 2016, 360 pp.
Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South
by Talitha L. LeFlouria
The University of North Carolina Press, 2016, 280 pp.
Sometime around 1910 in rural Georgia, a woman named Emma Wimms shot and killed a man named Raymond High. Wimms had confronted High about his abuse of her daughter, with whom he was involved. According to trial records, High had beaten the younger Wimms “severely.” When challenged by the mother, he came at her with a razor. She put him in the ground. But Wimms was black and this was Jim Crow Georgia. So there was only one place where an…
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