Women’s Herstory Month: Reflecting on Women Who Built Pathways Forward in Communities Impacted by Incarceration

‍Women’s Herstory Month invites reflection on the women who have shaped movements, challenged injustices, and held communities together through difficult periods in this nation’s history.

At Avenues for Justice (AFJ), we see the impact of that history every day in our work with young men and their families. Many of the challenges they face today were shaped by policies and practices that took root decades ago from the expansion of punitive drug laws in the 1970s to the sentencing policies of the 1980s and 1990s that significantly increased incarceration across the country.

Women have always been part of confronting those systems. Long before mass incarceration became widely understood as a national crisis, women were documenting how accusation, policing, and punishment were being used to control Black communities and limit opportunity.

In the late nineteenth century, journalist Ida B. Wells emerged as the leading voice exposing lynching in the United States. Through investigative reporting, data collection, and international advocacy, she challenged the false narrative that violence against Black men was tied to crime, documenting instead how accusations were used to justify racial terror and social control. In the early twentieth century, activist Mary Burnett Talbert helped advance anti-lynching efforts through national organizing networks, integrating the cause into broader movements for civil rights and women’s suffrage and mobilizing collective pressure for federal legislation.

Their work did not use the language of modern criminal justice reform, but it exposed a pattern: accusation, punishment, and racial control were closely linked. That understanding shaped later generations of organizers and legal reform advocates.

In the decades that followed, women continued to play critical roles in protecting their communities. Legal thinker Pauli Murray challenged discriminatory laws and policing practices, helping to build arguments that would influence civil rights litigation. In Mississippi, organizer Vera Pigee worked directly with families facing wrongful arrests and violence, organizing boycotts, raising funds for legal defense, and coordinating community responses when formal systems failed to provide protection.

By the 1960s and 1970s, as policing intensified and sentencing policies began to shift, women again took on central roles. Attorney and activist Florynce “Flo” Kennedy represented people targeted by policing and used the courts and the media to challenge unjust practices. Elaine Brown, a leader within the Black Panther Party, helped organize legal defense networks and community programs that supported families affected by incarceration and surveillance.

At the same time, the policy landscape was changing in ways that would dramatically expand incarceration. The War on Drugs, mandatory minimum sentencing laws, and policies like New York’s Rockefeller Drug Laws increased prison populations and disproportionately affected African American and Hispanic communities. The 1994 Crime Bill and related policies deepened those trends and extended the reach of the criminal legal system across the country.

As incarceration rates grew, women continued to organize and advocate. Deborah Small worked to expose the racial disparities embedded in drug policy and sentencing laws. Legal scholar Dorothy Roberts examined how incarceration and family regulation systems separated parents and children, often with long-term consequences for entire communities. Civil rights attorney Margaret Burnham has continued that work by investigating racially motivated killings and pursuing accountability through the legal system.

Across generations, women have played multiple roles in confronting incarceration: documenting injustice, organizing legal defense, challenging policy, and advocating for structural change. Their work has shaped how communities respond to the system and how reform efforts take hold.

At the same time, much of the day-to-day impact of incarceration has been carried by women inside families and neighborhoods. When someone is arrested or incarcerated, it is often women who take on the practical work that follows. They coordinate court appearances and legal representation, navigate visitation systems, manage the financial strain of fines and fees, and support reentry when a sentence ends. They raise children through long periods of separation and maintain connections that help families remain intact.

‍This work is rarely recognized as leadership, but it has been essential to the stability of families and communities most affected by incarceration. Across generations, Black and Brown women have been a steady presence managing the systems around incarceration while also working to change them.

Women’s Herstory Month offers a moment to recognize that continuum. Women have played central roles in documenting injustice, building community support, and sustaining families through the long reach of incarceration. Their work has often been quiet, practical, and persistent and it has shaped what is possible for the next generation.

There is pride in that history. Pride in the clarity, discipline, and commitment that women have brought to this work across generations. Pride in knowing that their leadership has helped families remain connected, helped communities remain stable, and helped create pathways forward even in difficult circumstances.

At Avenues for Justice, we see that legacy every day. It continues in the work of supporting young people, standing with families, and building alternatives that allow individuals and communities to move forward.

This Women’s Herstory Month, we honor the women who have shaped that path and the many who continue the work today. We honor the six amazing women at AFJ who continue the fight against the injustices our young people face. They are Justice In Action. Thank you Liz, Elsie, Julia, Lissette, Shantel, and Stephanie.