"Hanging Pretty Girls": The Criminalization of African American Children in Early America

At the start of the criminal reform movement and during the moment of northern emancipation, a startling phenonenon emerged in which Black children were hypercriminalized. Their treatment within the emerging criminal justice system was unusually harsh, and exceedingly violent. Officials confined Black children and especially Black girls to adult prisons, where they served lifetime sentences or even were executed. This article examines the experiences of individual Black girls in the criminal courts and prisons of Early America and illustrates that their severe punishments were a reaction to the threat of their freedom, and that these practices were an integral part of the development of the racialized carceral state.