All Kinds of Money : Black Women on the Moving and the Policing of Urban Alley Workers, 1900-1935

“All Kinds of Money”: Black Women on the Move and the Policing of Urban Alley Workers, 1900-1935 is a story about labor refusal, informal wage earning, and the rise of “criminal” identification in North America. My dissertation examines the migration, working, and carceral histories of Black women dubbed by police and press as “rollers” and “alley workers.” By the turn of the 20th century, white newspaper outlets regularly printed articles with headlines such as “Rolled by a Negress,” “Caught White Man in Alley,” and “Gang of Negresses Prey On White Men.” The racializing and labeling of rollers as a professional “criminal” class evolved from the everyday police complaints that came from white male Johns reporting that a “negress prostitute” had picked their pockets for a wallet or roll of cash. As a unique form of underground labor resistance, rolling Johns reflected an unorthodox picket line, a general strike, or an uprising against the criminalization and economic exploitation of Black women’s sexuality. Instead of a set wage, rollers insisted that men pay with all the cash they carried, even if it meant their last cent. I weave prison and police files, newspapers, and maps together to provide a social, legal, and geographical history of urban rollers and alley workers in North America between 1900 and 1935. I follow Nettie Weems—a notorious roller marked by police in as many as 12 different cities from Chicago to Vancouver to California—over a 20 year period. Weems’ migration and working history provides an alternative narrative to the Great Migration settlement story. Organized in four parts, each with two chapters, I map Black women’s migration patterns; how they confronted sex work and how they were policed and prosecuted in the urban city. Part One, “Looking for a Fugitive Negress” examines Black women on the move and the rise of criminal identification in North America from the 1850’s to the 1930’s. This part begins with a teenage Weems on the run as a “fugitive from Justice” in Chicago in 1914. Part Two, “Has Pictures of her in Various Cities,” follows Weems across the border to British Columbia, Canada in 1925 where one Black migrant woman stated there was “all kinds of money” in Vancouver’s underground sex economy. I reveal how police identification and surveillance technologies, including fingerprints and mug shots, followed migrant sex workers across city, state, and international borders. Police tracking also illuminates the extreme mobility of rollers in North America in the early 20th century. The third part, “Police Have Declared War,” examines the social construction of urban rollers and alley workers and the aggressive city wide campaigns targeting Black women. Chapters five and six highlight Weems’ migration from Vancouver back across the US border to Washington then to Sacramento where she hides out as a fugitive in 1925 before serving a four year prison term at San Quentin State Prison in California. The final part, “Comet in its Orbital Track” follows Weems out of prison in California where she travels back to British Columbia and up and down the pacific west coast during the Great Depression. During this period, Weems served a prison term in Canada and Washington state for rolling Johns. Police in many cities on the West coast had a record of her career as a roller, fugitive, and formerly imprisoned woman. The concluding chapters uses arrest records to map and illuminate the impact of policing and vagrancy laws on the forced and unforced migrations of Black itinerant sex workers like Nettie Weems

The Next Reconstruction: Examining the Call for a National Reparations Program

In this brief, we examine the evolution of reparations proposals in the United States, connect a national reparations program to the United Nations' international human rights standards around reparations, and discuss the potential of a national reparations program to close long-standing racial gaps in wealth, housing, education, criminal justice, and other areas. We focus in part on the reparations commission proposed by H.R. 40, the most comprehensive reparations legislation in US history. We also make recommendations for strengthening the research and policy-development infrastructure for reparations.We argue that in addition to compensation for past harms, conceptualizations of reparations should involve looking at present practices, policies, and barriers to economic security and wealth building for Black Americans. We can account for historical injustices and prioritize how they have contributed to and exacerbated present inequalities while considering how current policies continue to exacerbate and reproduce those inequalities.In addition to exploring early reparations efforts in the United States, we review selected policy proposals that have involved efforts to make progress on reparations for Black Americans, analyze the current reparations policy landscape, and recommend ways researchers can identify approaches to make reparations effective at eliminating key racial gaps for Black Americans. This research can inform policy discussions and analyses of reparations, especially as governments continue to explore them

Turning the Page: Oklahomas Criminal Justice Reform Story

After being named the state with the highest incarceration rate in 2016, Oklahoma made intentional policy changes, reducing its prison population by 21 percent. This report chronicles the progress made in Oklahoma and the impact of reforms intended to create a smaller, better, fairer, and safer justice system. It also highlights areas where continued improvement is needed

An analysis of the role of government in the locational decisions of Cambridge biotechnology firms

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 2007."September 2007."Includes bibliographical references (leaves 224-229).This dissertation examines the validity of what Prof. Noam Chomsky has referred to as the central role of the dynamic, entrepreneurial state sector in economic development. Through an examination of the role that government at three levels-local, state, and federal-has played in the locational decisions of firms in Cambridge's biotechnology industry, the impact of the state sector in the evolution of a critically important knowledge-intensive industry is explored. Interviews, surveys, and geographical analysis were conducted to evaluate the author's hypothesis. The answer demonstrated by the evidence presented herein is that the success of the Cambridge biotechnology cluster is indeed the outcome of a distinct set of local, state and federal government policy choices.by Michael Sankofa Sable ...Ph.D

Juvenile Corrections in the Era of Reform: A Meta-Synthesis of Qualitative Studies

In this article, the authors synthesize knowledge from select qualitative studies examining rehabilitation-oriented juvenile residential corrections and aftercare programs. Using meta-synthesis methodology, the authors extracted and coded content from 10 research studies conducted by five authors across criminology, sociology, and social welfare disciplines. The total number of published works based on those studies analyzed was 18. Collectively, these studies offer insight into three major components of the juvenile correctional experience: therapeutic treatment and evidence-based practices, the shaping of identities and masculinities, and preparation for reentry. This analysis is particularly important as the United States is currently in an era of reform during which policymakers are increasingly espousing the benefits of rehabilitation for youth offenders over punishment. These studies took place before, during, and after this era of reform, and yet, the findings are surprisingly consistent over time, raising key questions about the effectiveness of the reform strategies

Cultural Showcase: Sankofa

Sankofa is a symbolic, Ghanaian expression represented by a bird whose head turns back looking towards the past. The Sankofa African Dance and Drum Ensemble retrieves the cultural essences of the past and brings them into the present.The ensemble presents dance and theater works expressing the dynamic presence of African culture in America. Some of the presentations are replicas of traditional African prototypes; and some are re-creations, employing contemporary themes and movement motifs. The members of the African Dance and Drum Ensemble of The College at Brockport represent the rich cultural heritage of Asia, the Caribbean, Europe, the Americas, and Africa that exists within our university community. Clyde Alafiju Morgan has been the artistic director since 1985. Music director Khalid Abdul N\u27Fally Saleem joined the ensemble in 1994

Straight Outta Intersectionality: A Review of “Straight Outta Compton” From My Six Selves

It is not a surprise that the film Straight Outta Compton has had great success at the box office. To many hip hop heads, this biopic about NWA, one of the most pivotal and provocative groups in hip hop history, is long overdue. However, it wouldn’t be an NWA film without controversy. In this article, Dr. Billye Sankofa Waters responds to the film from her personal and scholarly platforms

Freedom Lessons: Black Mothers Asserting Smartness of Their Children

It is imperative to explore multiple approaches to intelligence and public education that fundamentally integrate the ideas and lived experiences of students – with particular interest to those who are most disenfranchised. Within various black communities, the oral traditions transmitted at home are life-affirming freedom lessons, engendered by lived experiences, which must be considered when teaching black children in the classroom environment. With consideration to black women, the freedom lessons they teach, and how they collectively shape smartness for black children, this article is organized in three sections. The first examines cultural constructions of history, knowledge and black women. The second explores the freedom lessons of three black mothers that were collected during a 2011–2012 ethnographic study and are presented as three sets of narratives: community smartness, world smartness, and individual smartness. The final section concludes with an analysis of smartness as a social critique and implications for teachers