“One thing is, in this country, if you’re not in the narrative, you’re not going to be in the policy.”
Reverend William Barber on the Political Power of Poor People, Intelligencer (Dec 5, 2019)
In the Health Equity framework, family violence and incarceration are leaves on the tree of health that we can easily see. The criminal justice system, involving policing, jails and prisons, the judiciary and re-entry, are the root causes that shape the behaviors we see. Unequal systems of power constitute the soil that is not always readily seen that feed the roots of the criminal justice system.
If the stories of people most directly affected by violence and incarceration are not told, the policies we develop for our communities will not be equitable. Systems of power are sharply revealed in the story of York, unrecognized for his contribution to the Lewis and Clark Expedition and denied his freedom long afterwards. Now, our job is to create a new narrative that challenges long-standing systems of power while making our criminal justice systems more equitable for all.
At a public presentation at the University of Louisville Law School on Monday, March 2nd, Historian Charlene J. Fletcher proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that the telling of history matters. Ms. Fletcher is a scholar focusing on black women’s history in Kentucky, a survivor of domestic abuse, and an advocate for social change. Her powerful presentation, combining experience, activism, and research, demonstrates the importance of lived experiences in transforming our criminal justice systems.
Fletcher focused on now recovered histories of two women: Lila White and Fannie Keys Harvey and their stories of abuse, resistance, and confinement during the 1890s and early 1900s in central Kentucky. Lila White suffered severe abuse from her ostensibly respectable family, resorted to arson, and was confined first in prison and then a mental institution where she died. Fannie Keys Harvey, deeply impoverished, committed a string of petty crimes and fought back against her abusive husband and the police officer that arrested her. She went in and out of prison and lived to testify in 1897 against the conditions in the state prison in Frankfort that housed both women and men then and until 1937.
These powerful personal stories, so important in themselves, also become a window into the systems of power that link domestic violence with incarceration in our city, state and nation today. As a young woman, Lila White worked as a domestic, one of the few jobs opened to black women. She was only one generation removed from slavery, yet black women today still face inequalities in both job opportunities and wages. Lila’s abuse came from her own family, and she suffered long in silence, fearing shame, stigma and reprisals. Today, it is estimated that only about half of domestic violence cases are reported. Fannie Keys Harvey grew up and lived in a section of Lexington that had no sewers, clean water or adequate housing. As income inequality increases today, there is still too little understanding of how poverty can be a root cause of crime and violence.
The stories of Lila White, Fannie Keys Harvey and all confined African American women matter. As Reverend William Barber, leader of the Poor People’s Campaign, points out, “if you are not in the narrative, you’re not going to be in the policy.” Changing the narrative means examining the systems of power that maintain inequitable social conditions based on race, ethnicity, gender identities, economic status and physical abilities. Louisville Family Justice Advocate’s (LFJA) work is challenging current stereotypes about who is incarcerated and why, now and in the past. LFJA asks: Whose story is being told and how is the story contributing to creating policy?
Louisville Family Justice Advocates 