Talitha L. LeFlouria — Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block - with Marcus Board Jr. — at Conn Ave
Talitha L. LeFlouria visits Politics and Prose to discuss her new book *Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block*, a work selected by *Ms. Magazine* as one of its most anticipated feminist books of 2026. In the book, LeFlouria argues that mass incarceration was built to protect the institution of slavery and the profits of enslavers, and that this legacy continues to shape the lives of Black Americans today. She centers Black women, whose experiences with arrest, conviction, and imprisonment have often been overshadowed by accounts focused on Black men, and she traces the intertwining of enslavement and incarceration from the domestic slave trade era through the post-Civil War period and into the present.
Drawing on archival sources and personal testimonies, LeFlouria tells the stories of Black women who endured the carceral system across centuries, including Delia Garlic, who was held in a slave jail and later sold to a sheriff during the peak 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 twentieth-century cell block in ways reminiscent of the auction block two hundred years earlier. LeFlouria is an associate professor of history and the Mastin Gentry White Fellow in Southern History at the University of Texas at Austin, and the author of the multi-award-winning *Chained in Silence*. Her work has appeared in *The Atlantic*, *The Washington Post*, *Ms. Magazine*, *The Root*, and *Vox*, and she has received numerous awards, including an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship from the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
LeFlouria will be joined in conversation by Marcus Board Jr., Ph.D., an associate professor of political science at Howard University in Washington, D.C., and author of *Invisible Weapons* (Oxford, 2022). Board's research focuses on social movements, radical Black feminist theories of power, and public opinion, and he has spent two decades building politically and personally connected communities while advocating for youth empowerment, abolition, and systemic accountability.
When: Monday, August 17, 2026, at 7:00pm.
Venue: Politics and Prose at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20008.
Admission: This event is free with first come, first served seating.
Livestream: A livestream option is available for those who cannot attend in person.
Accessibility: To request accommodations or inquire about accessibility, email events@politics-prose.com, ideally one week before the event date; organizers will make an effort to accommodate all requests up until the time of the event.
Book: *Searching for Jane Crow: Black Women and Mass Incarceration in America from the Auction Block to the Cell Block* by Talitha L. LeFlouria is available for preorder at $32.00 in hardcover, with a publish date of August 11, 2026.
Lineup: Talitha L. LeFlouria in conversation with Marcus Board Jr., Ph.D.