A Discussion of Rebekka Michaelsen’s article-in-progress “The Notorious Mrs. Nobles: Jim Crow Gender and “Insanity” in Late Nineteenth-Century Georgia”

This article-in-progress recovers the case of Elizabeth Nobles, an elderly, poor white woman who conspired with her Black farm hand to murder her husband in rural Georgia in 1895. While other historians have demonstrated the importance of race and gender to the Jim Crow South, this paper shows how notions of disability, in this case “insanity,” reinforced Jim Crow. While, for Mrs. Nobles, “insanity” became a reputable legal defense to save her life as well as a rhetorical apology for her transgression of Jim Crow racial and gender hierarchies, “insanity” could simultaneously serve as way of “othering” and “defeminizing” Black women.

Date: February 10th, 11:30AM – 12:30PM

The zoom link and paper will be sent out a week in advance. Please email Rebeca Martinez at rmartnz165@g.ucla.edu to receive this information.