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One of the more pernicious political tools that corporatist conservatives and others have created since at least the American civil war, has been the transition of de jure slavery into the modern form of the criminal justice system.
A variety of factors have driven this process. Prisons have largely become warehouses of surplus labor, prison industry, the disenfranchisement of urban voters, and gerrymandering into rural conservative districts. more…
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This is the final article in this series (Oct 19-22, 2010). The connections have been drawn between the reality we face today in gulag America to its foundation in convict leasing and prison industrialization in the post-bellum period (1865-77). And is now meeting with a resurgence thru prison privateering…
Tennessee Coal Creek War
One of the central books in this discovery process is “Worse Than Slavery…” by David M. Oshinsky (1997). The South initiated the technique of criminalizing those they could, notably the former slaves in order to disenfranchise them from political power, dehumanize them in the popular culture, and to exploit their labor. Over 100 years of Jim Crow helped create this perversion even in the midst of the struggle for democracy. more…
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…This article is third in a series. The previous two were the 20th and 21st of October, 2010…
In the immediate period of the South after the Civil War (1865), there was a severe shortage of white males and a surplus of newly freed blacks. In the competition between them, whites had the decided advantage of greater political and social resources.
Private Prison Industry...
For several years, the Union Army and the Freedman’s Bureau enforced emancipation, but by 1877 the Republican Party surrendered the South in return for the election. The stage was set for Jim Crow and mass black criminalization. 
Labor-intensive industries, such as cotton, lent themselves to plantation organization. Within short order, a number of Black Codes were specifically created to provide the law and sanctions to maintain this labor. These included the Vagrancy Act, which provided that all blacks over the age of 18 must provide proof of a job at the beginning of every year. more…
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…This article is continued from yesterday, October 20th, 2010…
At the conclusion of the American Civil War, white Southerners soon enacted political control over the newly emancipated slaves. Initially, the exception clause to the 13th Amendment (1865; outlawing slavery) allowed a form of re-enslavement by criminalizing blacks.
Col. "Ned" Richardson
Most blacks remained where they were working as tenants or field hands at whatever was paid them. One Union officer was quoted as stating, “To be free and black in Mississippi is first to beg, then to steal, and then to starve. That is their reality.” For all too many, that more or less became their lot over the next 100 years.
White Southerners used the power that was available to them: Political power over the laws. David M. Oshinski’s book, “Worse Than Slavery…” (1997), tracks how the political and justice system was used as a tool to re-enslave many blacks, to disenfranchise the race from all political power, to dehumanize them as a people before society, and to lay the foundation for the modern prison/industry system in America. more…
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There are episodes in the histories of all peoples that are joyful and shameful. Some to be praised and commemorated, and others seemingly best forgotten, or worse, blamed on the “other.”
Worse Than Slavery...
One of the best forgotten would seem to be the immediate period after the American Civil War. And, in fact, much of it seems to have been, indeed, “forgotten.” Too bad. It’s true: History forgotten is history repeated.
When I was in my sixth year of imprisonment in the contemporary American gulag–currently at three million and still growing–a friend sent me a just-published book, “Worse Than Slavery,” Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, by David M. Oshinsky (1996).
If one has a personal library that includes any American history, “Worse Than Slavery” is definitely one of those to include. If my 20+ years in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has any positive meaning, knowing how we came to this point is certainly one of them. more…
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Given the news over the past weekend, I’m reminded of some time I spent in Mississippi in ’63 and ’64. I was lucky…Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner, not so lucky…
House that blood built...
Many years later, I had an acquaintance in one of the federal prisons—don’t even recall his real name, everyone called him Mississippi Mud. He was an old guy in a wheelchair and he’d been convicted on some ancient civil rights case…a lynching. Mud was quite a character. more…
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On one occasion I was invited to speak to an assembly at the prison chapel on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Apparently, I was the only prisoner in a camp of over 800 souls who had actually marched with Dr. King.
Almost all of the campers present were black. The majority had not been born when Dr. King was assassinated (1968). As Dr. King would say, “Longevity has its uses…”
I’d like to be able to write that that my short speech included how “acting black” is one of the greatest tricks perpetrated on the African-American.
Despite the intervention of perceptive black leadership, many inmates continue to employ the “nigger” and “monkey ass” vernacular incessantly.
It’s difficult to even get to lunchtime without hearing the epithets–both in casual conversation and as invective–constantly. Jim Crow is quite alive and well even in the black culture. more…
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Today is the 39th anniversary of the events of September 9th, 1971, which led to the “bloodiest one-day encounter between Americans since the Civil War.” What should have stood as a beacon of prisoner solidarity and reconciliation, became a state riot of murderous retribution and punishment.
Governor's reaction to Attica...
All 383 “correctional” officers at Attica were white. Many were open racists and carried and used their batons, which they called “nigger sticks.” more…
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I recall that one of the more common sights I witnessed in the South of the 1950s and ‘60s were billboard ads: Impeach Earl Warren! Warren was the Chief Justice at the United States Supreme Court.
June 1963 Birmingham, AL
It was almost 100 years since the end of the Civil War when Warren steered the unanimous decision for Brown v. Board of Education (1954), thus overturning the Jim Crow era Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the so-called “separate but equal” racist double-speak decision. more…
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Flying Con-Air in 2001 from the Lewisburg to the Atlanta Penitentiaries after 11 years in the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP), I was intensely curious as to how the South had changed. Especially the prisons.
My initial serious time behind the walls was the 1964-65 period when I was sent to a Tennessee chain-gang. While it was only a misdemeanor case, it managed to stretch into more than a year of hard time.
I was young and full of it; fighting for civil rights, I was convinced I was going to change the world—or at least part of it. There were those just as convinced that I wasn’t. more…
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