Essay 1
In the Jim Crow South, the convict lease system was used to disenfranchise black people, both male and female. Although black men outnumbered black women in the system, black women were uniquely affected in ways that both belittled and warped their identities as both black and female. In the convict lease system, white women were exempt from system while black women were not, black women endured the paradox of assuming traditional female roles while being regarded as not female, and black women were portrayed as sexual fiends but received unwanted sexual abuse from their prison guards. For white people, the term “black woman” was a “oxymoronic statement” in that the term “black” negated the term “woman.” This view can best be scene in the judicial dealings of the white Martha Gault and the black Eliza Cobb. Cobb, who was arrested and convicted under circumstantial evidence of infanticide, was painted as idiotic and monstrous by those arguing in for her pardonment. On the other hand, Gault was charged with intent to murder and theft of an automobile with “damning judicial commentary,” but, based on her apparent femininity, the judge conceded “she …show more content…
Black women were not exempt from hard labor because they were women, and faced the “extraordinary double duty” of performing domestic duties and other tasks for each camp industry. Prison guards lacked leniency in work and in punishment for women as idleness, failing to work, bad work, slowness, and sickness were all considered grave offenses, punishable by lash for black women. Many pregnant black women were exempt from neither chain gang sentences nor the backbreaking labor the chain gang demanded. Women in the chain gang gave birth prematurely, miscarried, or gave birth during