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.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Lauren, "The Story of Jennie Steers: An Examination of Race, Gender, and Lynching in Northwest Louisiana" (2023). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 3088.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/3088
Included in
African American Studies Commons, History of Gender Commons, Public History Commons, Women's History Commons
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.