Date of Award

5-2023

Degree Type

Thesis-Restricted

Degree Name

M.A.

Degree Program

History

Department

History

Major Professor

Mary Niall Mitchell

Second Advisor

Kathryn Dungy

Third Advisor

Jeffrey Parker

Abstract

As the nineteenth century ended, the American South entered a new century equipped with the foundations of a Jim Crow society. Through political intimidation, segregation, and racial violence—most notoriously through the practice of lynching—white Southerners reasserted white supremacist rule. Yet the lynching of Black men in this era is more often documented than the plight of Black women at the hands of white mobs and local authorities. By focusing on Jennie Steers, a woman lynched outside of Shreveport, Louisiana in 1903, this project sheds light on the violent history of Northwest Louisiana and the ways in which Black women navigated the racial codes and structures of the segregated South. Steers’s story challenges the inequitable production of history that purposefully forgets Black women and racial violence in Southern historical memory. Only by unearthing the life of Steers and other women, and highlighting Black female resistance to white supremacy, can historians counter the fictitious, benevolent, and romanticized portrayals of Southern history still embedded in the contemporary landscape.

Rights

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

Share

COinS