Semester of Graduation

August 2024

Degree

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

Department of History

Document Type

Thesis

Abstract

In 1840s and early 1850s New Orleans, eight free women of color were incarcerated, some for multiple separate periods, in the Third Municipality Workhouse. These free women of color in Antebellum New Orleans are connected to Black women with Bertillon Cards in early twentieth century New Orleans by a tendency to get arrested for similar behavior, having similar options once they received sentences, and living in legal systems created to marginalize them. Bertillon Cards kept track of physical and personal details of arrestees, making it easier for police to identify alleged criminals. During the early twentieth century, the NOPD created Bertillon Cards for Black women who allegedly committed criminal acts. This thesis argues that the legal system targeted Black women, the free women of color in the third municipality workhouse differed from stereotypes, and the Black women in the Bertillon Cards held identities distinct from being perpetrators of crimes. The first chapter argues that the legislation and policing of New Orleans targeted free women of color, an injustice fueled by myths based in racism. The second chapter reveals how free women of color in the workhouse differed from the popular conceptions of New Orleans’ free women of color and complicated the label of vagrancy placed on them. The third chapter considers how developments in culture, legislation, and policing affected Black people in New Orleans by the early twentieth century. The fourth chapter contends that the Black women whom the NOPD arrested held multiple identities outside of their criminalization. The thesis concludes by describing how Black women in New Orleans faced dehumanization and criminalization in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, although the societal context changed.

Date

7-16-2024

Committee Chair

Long, Alecia P.

Available for download on Tuesday, July 15, 2031

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