“Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America From the Auction Block to the Cell Block” by Talitha L. LeFlouria, c.2026, Beacon Press, $32.00, 224 pages
What goes through a Black woman’s mind as she is led away to serve a prison sentence?
What happens to her children, her home? Does she already know the shackles could make her wrists ache, that they could always be too tight?
In the new book “Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block,” author Talitha LeFlouria examines whether today’s answers to those unsettling questions would be any different for an imprisoned or enslaved woman in 1845.
Two summers ago, LeFlouria, a history professor at the University of Texas at Austin, visited the Orleans Justice Center in New Orleans to interview female inmates. The experience sparked an epiphany for the educator, who also wrote “Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South” in 2015. She realized that she was meant to share “courageous” stories about incarcerated women.
One tale troubled her.
A California woman told LaFlouria that when she went to prison, she was stripped and humiliated, physically searched before being dressed in a uniform that identified her as “Property of … ” She was given a number and chained around her ankles and wrists – similar to the treatment that millions of enslaved people endured more than a century ago and, according to “Searching for Jane Crow,” one-third were women.
“I immediately noticed the deep historical influence of slavery’s legacies on mass incarceration,” LaFlouria says.
Through her research, she discovered “slave jails” that originated in the early 19th century to warehouse enslaved people. Food was scarce, she says, the floors were filthy and space was tight. The jails “played a key role in introducing profit-based incarceration … ” Women were confined there indefinitely by slaveowners who rented them out for housework, fieldwork or sex work. Several large, and infamous, slave jails were established, she says. And the Ku Klux Klan was involved in operating at least one.
For the imprisoned women, the slave jails were confusing and frightening. If a woman somehow escaped, she often feared that she might end up there again. Then, as now, the threat of reincarceration was always present.
“Searching for Jane Crow” is a hard book to pin down.
It can feel like an old-fashioned Victorian drama written in a florid style, which conflicts with the 19th century slave stories it tells. Although the author’s use of period-appropriate language adds authenticity, it yields an ornate tone that sometimes clashes with the harrowing severity of the situations LeFlouria describes.
But every single point lands as the author intends in this book, every bit of research is solid, every story is unforgettable. LeFlouria makes her comparisons clear, and it’s hard to look away and even harder not to notice other indignities and inequalities. Once you’re good and shocked, she shifts to an activism stance, offering advice to help change the status quo in the prison system, support incarcerated Black women to reduce recidivism, and ensure their children receive care while their mothers are away.
Despite its bumps, stick with this book until the last page. You’ll be astounded by the new and thoughtful way it dissects the prison system. Just prepare yourself.
