Kali Nicole Gross is professor of African American studies at Emory University. She examines Black women’s historical experiences in the U.S. criminal justice system. Her books include Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880–1910, winner of the 2006 Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize, and Hannah Mary Tabbs and the Disembodied Torso: A Tale of Race, Sex, and Violence in America, winner of the 2017 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Nonfiction. Her latest book is A Black Women’s History of the United States, coauthored with Daina Ramey Berry. Her commentary and opinion pieces can be found in the Washington Post, The Root, and Politico.
Her project, “Lightning She Rode: Black Women in Life, History, and Death by Electric Chair,” uses narrative histories of Black women disproportionately sentenced to the electric chair to shed new light on the historic inequitable use of lethal punishment in the United States. Also a tale of American modernity and its collision with Black life, it will explore the chair’s evolution in the nation’s culture and legal system, expanding the historical record to help inform ongoing discussions about resumed federal executions and future criminal justice reform.
