URCAD Sneak Peek: Elle Enomanna

Wed, 01 Apr 2026 08:59:01 -0400

Elle Enomanna is a Political Science major with a minor in History, and a member of the Honors College.

Title: The Erasure of Jane Crow from the Modern Legal System

Mentor: Dr. Michelle Scott

Come see Elle's oral presentation at URCAD on April 22: 1:35-1:50pm in RAC 106.

Abstract:

Black feminist studies scholars and journalists are calling the 2020s the new Era of Jane Crow (the double jeopardy of racism and sexism),as Black women’s rights are being eroded. How did the legal systems of the United States of America go from integrating activist Pauli Murray’s 'Jane Crow' theory into its laws in the 1960s to today, where Adriana Smith, a 30-year-old Black woman in Georgia, was forced to carry her baby to term, well after her brain death? This project is a critical historical and legal analysis of the impact of Jane Crow on American society, drawing on Murray’s autobiography, their mid-twentieth-century legal scholarship, Supreme Court cases from the 1940s to the present, as well as congressional debates over the Equal Rights Amendment. In doing so, this project analyzes how Jane Crow shaped, or failed to shape, the Human Rights doctrine and statutes of today. In short, this project argues that the modern American legal system's failure to fully integrate Murray’s theory of Jane Crow into law has only increased Black women’s vulnerability, whether it is in the workforce or the doctor’s office.

For more info:

URCAD.umbc.edu