Dr. Mary Thomas and Dr. Tiyi Morris are collaborating on a race relations research project to understand the forces of racial segregation that incarcerated people encounter when they enter prison. Without a rigorous analysis of these historical and contemporary conditions, any response to the forces that maintain them is inadequate. We know next to nothing about race relations among and between women and LBGTQ+ people in women’s prisons, or the specific contexts of Ohio’s three prisons for women especially at ORW which opened in 1916.
We also believe that there remain rich histories and experiences of race relations that do not merely reflect antagonism. The criminology literature tends toward an antagonist view of racial segregation among men, rather than allowing understandings for incarcerated people’s desire for practices of racial unity and peer-racial support to emerge, especially for African Americans or for unifying practices of place-based identities/cultures in the case of rural or Appalachian people (many of whom are white) in Ohio. Our research in consultation with LAM foregrounds narratives of intra- and inter-racial relations with keen intersectional attention on how gender, sexuality, and regional meanings shift over time and in tandem with social justice movements from the Civil Rights, Black Power, and Black Lives Matter eras, and about resurgent white populism especially among rural and Appalachian Ohioans.
Our research draws on archival research as well as interviews with currently incarcerated and previously incarcerated people to examine the historical and contemporary ways that they have subverted the limitations of racially constructed carceral spaces to forge intra- and interracial relationships.