Chained in Silence: Black Women & Convict Labor in the New South, ft Dr. Talitha LeFlouria

Our Executive Director, Sydney McKinney, spoke with Dr. Talitha LeFlouria about her book, "Chained in Silence: Black Women And Convict Labor in the New South." Dr. LeFlouria's work uncovers the hidden history of African-American women caught in the web of Georgia's convict leasing system during the late 19th century.
We gained a deeper understanding of the intersection of race, gender, and labor during the tumultuous era of the late 19th century. We saw how the past exploitation and criminalization of Black women continues today, and discussed how we are working to end the systems that have been in place that perpetuate the criminalization of Black women and girls.
Dr. Talitha L. LeFlouria is an Associate Professor of History and Fellow of the Mastin Gentry White Professorship in Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her Ph.D. in US History at Howard University and is the author of Chained in Silence: Black Women and Convict Labor in the New South (UNC, 2015), the first history of Black, working-class incarcerated women in the post-Civil War period. This book received several awards including the Darlene Clark Hine Award from the Organization of American Historians (2016) and the Philip Taft Labor History Award from the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations & Labor and Working-Class History Association (2016).