Searching for Jane Crow - by Talitha L Leflouria (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Gives voice to the Black women whose lives were devastated by the carceral system and sheds powerful light on its slavery-based roots to transform how we think about mass incarceration

For readers of Michelle Alexander, Anglea Y. Davis, and Clint Smith

A Ms. Magazine "Most Anticipated Feminist Books of 2026" Pick

Historian Talitha L. LeFlouria centers Black women at the core of a fresh argument: that the system of mass incarceration was established as protection for the institution of slavery and the profits of enslavers and that this legacy continues today.

For centuries, Black women in America have experienced extreme rates of arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the nation's jails and prisons, yet their experiences have often been overlooked in favor of Black men's.

Arguing that the merger between profit and punishment continues to keep Black people bound, LeFlouria traces the connection between enslavement and incarceration, revealing how they have always been intertwined--from the domestic slave trade of 1810-1865, when an estimated one million people were incarcerated in privately owned slave jails, to the post-Civil War era when Black people were enslaved through new systems of state-sponsored mass incarceration, and through to today.

Using archival sources and personal testimonies, LeFlouria tells a new origin story of mass incarceration with the stories of numerous Black women throughout history, including:

- Delia Garlic, who was incarcerated in a slave jail and later sold to a sheriff at the height of the domestic slave trade
- Eliza Purdy, who was jailed and sold to the highest bidder a year after the Civil War ended, and
- Susan Burton, who was commodified and trafficked through a 20th-century cell block, much like an enslaved person on the auction block 200 years prior.

Review Quotes

"[E]ye-opening . . . [A] damning look at the racialized nature of the US prison system."
--Publishers Weekly

"An incisive and radical argument."
--Booklist

"Talitha L. LeFlouria delivers a paradigm-shifting account of American incarceration, tracing its roots to the domestic slave trade and the long history of racialized confinement that has shaped Black women's lives for centuries. With extraordinary archival rigor and narrative power, she reveals mass incarceration not as a modern aberration but as a central throughline of our nation's history. This book ought to change forever how the history of mass incarceration is told."
--Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

"A brilliant and original book . . . revealing that mass incarceration did not begin with the War on Drugs but with slavery . . . A must-read."
--Susan Burton, winner of the NAACP Image Award for Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women

"Like the early abolitionists who confronted the public with stories about American slavery as it was, LeFlouria urges us to look, without flinching, at incarcerations then and now. . . . The reader who does so will be changed."
--W. Caleb McDaniel, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America

"With a passionate pen and a thorough mining of the archive, LeFlouria reshapes the terrain of carceral studies. . . . A powerful and purposeful must-read."
--Erica Armstrong Dunbar, author of Never Caught: The Washingtons' Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge

"An eloquent, long-overdue corrective . . . If you yearn to understand how our penal system became what it is today and where Black women fit in that story, this is the book for you."
--Stephanie E. Jones-Rogers, author of They Were Her Property: White Women as Slave Owners in the American South

"Searching for Jane Crow is a powerful, truth telling account that centers Black women too often erased from conversations on incarceration. Talitha L. LeFlouria exposes the legacy of punishment and profit, calling us to build systems rooted in dignity, equity, and freedom for all."
--David Ayala, executive director of the Formerly Incarcerated, Convicted People & Families Movement

About the Author

Talitha L. LeFlouria is one of the nation's leading authorities on the history of Black women, mass incarceration, and the legacies of American slavery. She is an associate professor of history, and the Mastin Gentry White Fellow in Southern History at The University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of the multi-award-winning book, Chained in Silence. Dr. LeFlouria has received numerous awards for her research, including an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Andrew Carnegie Foundation, and her work has been featured in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, The Root, and Vox.