Mercer Times

Leigh-Anne Francis, an associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies with a joint appointment in African American studies, has been awarded the 2024-2025 Gitenstein-Hart Sabbatical Prize. This prize supports faculty by providing financial resources to focus on scholarly work during a full-year sabbatical. Francis will use this opportunity to advance her book project titled "Jane Crow (In)Justice: Race, Crime, and Punishment in New York State, 1893–1933."

The Gitenstein-Hart Sabbatical Prize was established in 2014 through the generosity of former TCNJ president R. Barbara Gitenstein and her husband Don Hart. It aims to support faculty members or librarians in their academic pursuits.

Francis's book delves into the intersections of gender, race, class, crime, punishment, labor, and community through Black women's experiences. Her research is inspired by her own arrest as a graduate student in 2003 and examines the factors contributing to the high incarceration rates of Black women in upstate New York at the turn of the century.

“There’s not a lot of attention, historically, to Black women in the prison system,” Francis states. “I’m placing Black women prisoners in a historical context and exploring their full humanity — what can I learn about these women beyond the crimes they committed?”

She argues that Black women's criminal activities were rational responses to structural racism and economic injustice. “These were poverty crimes; these were survival crimes,” she explains. “You don’t steal food to get rich; you steal food because you need to eat.”

Francis plans to explore various sources such as newspapers and prison records for more information on individual women while also seeking other ways to capture their voices. “I’m trying to do as much work as I can to get at their voices,” she notes.

Her goal is not only documenting these stories but also providing analyses that could aid policymakers and activists addressing current incarceration issues within African American communities.

“I chose to teach and be a scholar of history because it can shed light on the present,” Francis says. “The problem of mass incarceration — and the way it impacts communities of color — isn’t going anywhere.”