'I Laid Earl and Clementine on a Chair and Whipped Them': Child Murder and Criminal Justice in the Jim Crow South.

This article examines the 1945 child murder case of Ernestine Bonneval in New Orleans to illustrate broader shifts in Southern criminal justice during the Jim Crow era. Bonneval, a white mother, fatally abused her 7-year-old daughter Clementine, provoking initial public outrage and demands for harsh punishment; however, the judge sentenced her to only one year in prison, a decision that soon gained public sympathy for Bonneval as a victim of systemic failure. The case reflects four intersecting developments: increased acceptance of state authority influenced by New Deal programs, a national juvenile delinquency panic, gendered perceptions of female offenders, and, most critically, the racialization of crime that framed violence as primarily an African American issue. This racialized framework led to harsher policing and sentencing of African Americans while white offenders like Bonneval received leniency, demonstrating how Jim Crow shaped the modernization of Southern criminal justice by reinforcing white supremacy and racial disparities in law enforcement and punishment.