AHA Session 281
Sunday, January 11, 2026: 11:00 AM-12:30 PM
Continental C (Hilton Chicago, Lobby Level)
Chair:
Kristopher Bryan Burrell, Eugenio María de Hostos Community College, City University of New York
Papers:
Session Abstract
This panel explores the enduring tensions between movements for democracy and state repression, examining how struggles for civil rights, Black Power, and gender equality have been met with legal, political, and carceral backlash. Across different historical moments, the expansion of democratic participation has sparked reactionary responses that seek to restrict rights, expand criminalization, and solidify existing hierarchies of power. Engaging with the long trajectory of these struggles, this panel critically reflects on the methods through which the state simultaneously responded to and reshaped democratic demands. One paper examines the civil rights movement’s efforts to expand democracy, framing these struggles as acts of patriotism that sought to make the nation’s founding ideals a reality. While the movement secured legislative victories, its reliance on respectability politics left openings for regressive policies that later eroded its gains, contributing to the emergence of the carceral state in the late-twentieth century. Another paper interrogates the legislative responses to the Black freedom movement, analyzing how elected officials at all levels of government introduced laws to expand police powers, curb free speech, and criminalize protest. This paper explores the consequences of these laws, as well as the rhetorical battles waged by activists who fought to define their actions as democratic rather than subversive. The final paper examines the gendered dimension of mass incarceration, arguing that the criminalization of women, particularly poor women and women of color, was an overlooked but essential component of the backlash against the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s. As women gained more access to public life, state actors responded with policies that expanded surveillance, criminalization, and punitive welfare reforms, reinforcing gendered and racialized state control. Together, these papers ask why, in moments of democratic expansion, the state responds by restricting civil liberties and broadening its punitive capacities. By interrogating how state repression operates alongside movements for change, this panel challenges dominant narratives of American democracy and highlights the persistent entanglements between political struggle, legal structures, and the carceral state.
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