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K.K., Male, Age 24



Exhibit: Belle Starr--Bandit Queen

After viewing this photo, I realized that women maybe weren’t as incarcerated as commonly as men were. The caption states that the only time she went to jail was for one occasion of horse theft. I’m thinking that maybe people in that time didn’t see women criminals as serious threats to society as commonly as men were. Now that I think more about it, that’s probably a major advantage if you’re going to be known as a “Bandit Queen.”


Exhibit: The Workings of the Court

The thing that stuck out to me in this picture is that it was not ever often in that time for a woman to be in a major position of power. It seems like you would always see women in supportive roles rather than leadership roles. All throughout this exhibit we see several pictures of noteworthy men but not a lot of women. It is inspiring to me as I think about how far we have come today.

Exhibit: The Gallows

This correlates with the first picture pretty well. Hanging was a common sentence back in this time. The kiosk in front of these gallows says that over a period of 160 years, only 4 women were sentenced to hanging. I think the most interesting part of the exhibit was the jail part on the upper floor (didn’t get a picture for some reason). For the male prisoners you had a 3 stories of jail cells while the women had only 3 cells in a more run-down fashion. You didn’t really see women portrayed as criminals or remembered as such like their male counterparts.



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