Watch What it Meant to be a Convict on PBS. See more from Slavery by Another Name.

I’ve written quite a bit about the convict lease system on this blog and also about chain gangs. Below are just a few posts for those who are interested in the topic.

The Slaves of Turpentine: A First Hand Account of Convict Leasing

Resistance to Convict Lease System: First Hand Accounts by Women Reformers

Chain Gang Blues: Black Labor, New Slavery and Imprisonment

They Tell Me Joe Turner's Come And Gone: Music, Prison, and the Convict Lease System

I’ve seen the documentary and it is very very good. I highly recommend watching it on PBS tonight at 9 p.m. Eastern and 8 p.m. Central.

I have written before about the role of music in the lives of imprisoned black people particularly in the South by highlighting Angela Davis’s analysis of the song Chain Gang Blues. However, it was only a cursory consideration of how music described the Southern black experience of incarceration in the early 20th century.

Many people are familiar with prison worksongs without perhaps knowing much about their origins or purpose. In reviewing the book “Wake Up the Dead” by Bruce Jackson, Craig Ruskey describes the nature and value of prison worksongs:

Prison inmates were put to work in the various institutions where they were housed. Working in the cotton or tobacco fields, road and chain gangs, or clearing forests, there were different types of songs for each type of labor. A team would choose a leader as their singer, usually a man with a clear voice who could easily be heard. ‘Proper’ singing wasn’t necessary but the volume of the voice was. Sometimes, teams or crews of as many as eight men were put to work cutting a tree down, with each member of that team supplied an axe. The reason the worksong was so important to the team was simple; with eight men swinging individual axes at the same target, without a rhythm to work by, havoc would be the natural outcome! Simply put, it was a matter of the downbeat for one team to swing, and the upbeat for the other team to swing. In an eight man team, four men would follow the lead voice on the downbeat, so as they would swing their axes into the base of a tree, the opposite team would be singing a refrain and pulling their axes away from the tree. Road gangs and chain gangs would usually work with hoes or picks and in a straight line. Again, the leader would be the man with the clearest voice and he would start a song by singing the first line, then the entire team would use that rhythm and sing the second line. Field workers had songs of a more personal nature as they worked individually, singing primarily for their own enjoyment and to pass the time.

“Go Down Old Hannah” is a song that seems to have originated from black prisoners. Here is a recording of the song made at a Texas Prison Camp by the Lomaxes.

Former prisoner and blues legend Leadbelly recorded his own version of this worksong.

He explained how he first came across the song:

They called the sun Old Hannah because it was hot and they just give it a name. That’s what the boys called it when I was in prison. I didn’t hear it before I went down there. The boys were talking about Old Hannah – I kept looking and I didn’t see no Hannah, but they looked up and said, “That’s the sun.”

I hope to write more in depth about prison worksongs as American cultural artifacts in the future. Today I want to focus, instead, on the ways that Southern blacks who had been imprisoned expressed their reenslavement after Emancipation through song. I contend that these songs of the early to mid 20th century represent testimonials about the injustice of the criminal legal system for blacks.

The convict lease system and the chain gang were so prevalent in the South that they inspired many songs besides Chain Gang Blues. One of these songs titled “Standin’ On the Corner” has been recorded by several artists and has been reinterpreted many times. The song dates back to the early 20th century and in it, the singer usually describes how he was “Standin’ on the corner, doin’ no harm,” when “Up come a policeman and grab me by the arm.” He is taken to a judge, who winks at the policeman and says “Nigger you get some work to do,” and sends him “shackle bound” for six months on the chain gang.

Below is one version of the song that I could find on Youtube. It isn’t my ideal version but it offers an opportunity for those who’ve never heard the song to hear it performed for the first time.

In the post-Emancipation South, black people knew that they could be picked up randomly for anything. The Black Codes criminalized “vagrancy,” unemployment, and all kinds of other things. As such, the theme of wrongful imprisonment permeates many of the prison-inspired songs that were collected in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the South. One famous song titled “Penal Farm Blues” describes the experience of being snatched up and imprisoned for no apparent reason:

Early one morning : on my way to the penal farm
Baby all I’ve done : ain’t done nothing wrong

Loaded in the *dog* wagon : and down the road we go
Oh baby : oh baby you don’t know

Into the office : then to the bathhouse below
And with a light shower : baby we change our clothes

All last night : baby it seemed so long
All I’ve done : I ain’t done nothing wrong

I’ll tell you people : the penal farm is a lonesome place
And no one there : to smile up in your face

You can listen to Scrapper Blackwell’s version of the song below:

These songs of prison and captivity shaped what we have come to know as the blues. As I mentioned in my earlier post about Chain Gang Blues, Angela Davis suggests that imprisonment was a central theme in blues music. This is borne out over and over. One of my favorite musicians, the great John Lee Hooker (who Bonnie Rait re-introduced to the mainstream in the 1990s) recorded his version of Prison Bound in 1949. In the song, he tackles the important ideas of the separation from loved ones and the sense of abandonment that can come from being incarcerated.

When they had my trial, baby
You know you couldn’t be found
When they had my trial
Baby, you could not be found
But it’s too late to cry, baby
Your daddy’s prison bound

I have lamented the fact that current hip hop artists seem to shy away from creating art that reflects substantively on either their personal experiences of incarceration or on prison reform more broadly. This makes me appreciate the prison-inspired music of the early 20th century all the more. The songs are historical artifacts that shed light on our collective past. I wonder what artifacts future generations will be examining to understand our current epidemic of mass incarceration. It’s hard to think of any songs from our era that might endure in the way that Chain Gang Blues has.

Upon her release from prison in June 1906, it is unlikely that Laura Scott would have been able to find gainful employment immediately. She was a convicted felon who had spent nearly a year behind bars in the notorious San Quentin. Given what we know today about the high rate of recidivism for people who have been incarcerated, it should be no surprise that Laura found herself in trouble with the law again a few months after she was discharged.

On February 17 1907, Laura Scott was arrested by detectives Glenn and Stevens, both of whom were also black and she was charged with petty larceny. She was accused of stealing an alarm clock from Ms. H.C. Russell. According to the L.A. Times: “It was the last of a series of petty thefts on her part during the past ninety days (2/21/1907).” She allegedly sold the clock for 25 cents at a local pawn shop. She was bound over to the Superior Court and jailed while awaiting her trial.

Laura’s trial took place on April 8th 1907. The L.A. Herald sets the scene:

“Yesterday department one was crowded when the Scott woman’s case was called. Many of those among the spectators had contributed their mite to help in defending her and all were anxious to testify as to her general good character up to the time when the alleged purloining of the clock occurred.”

Mrs. Russell was the chief prosecution witness and she told the court what happened:

“On the afternoon the clock was taken [February 16] I was ironing when Miss Scott came in and sat down and began to talk. We had considerable conversation there, and I kept right on with my ironing. At that time the clock was on a table near where Ms. Scott sat. […] When she went out I didn’t notice at first that the clock was gone, but a few moments after that I discovered that I had lost the clock.”

Throughout the trial, Laura Scott maintained that she was innocent of the charges against her. The L.A. Times described her as having a “sullen and serious countenance” throughout the proceedings. This was in stark contrast with the demeanor of another key witness against Laura: Lizzie Douglas. Lizzie was described as a mulatto “whose mouth curved in a wondrously humorous and expansive smile as she cakewalked to the witness stand (4/9/1907).”

In her account, on the morning of February 16th, she had gone over to her friend Mrs. Russell’s home to help with ironing. Mrs. Russell brought out an alarm clock and set it on the “ice chest.” As she testified on the witness stand, Lizzie would periodically break out into fits of laughter as she remembered the details of the incident. Laura Scott came into the Russell home on San Julien Street for a “pall of beer.” Lizzie added: “I had whiskey myself.” She continued:

“[Laura] began lounging about the room and leaned up against the ice box. She picked up a piece of paper and looked at it, she said Mrs. Russel’s phone bill didn’t read exactly like hers. Then Mrs. Raymond came in, and after a little while she asked what time it was. As soon as she said that, Laura Scott went out. Mrs. Russel told Mrs. Raymond to look at the clock. Mrs. Raymond said she didn’t see any clock. Mrs. Russel asked her if she was blind, and told her to look on the ice box. Mrs. Raymond said she did, but she didn’t see any clock. We all looked then, and the clock wasn’t there. Then Mrs. Russel sent her boy to tell Mrs. Scott to bring the clock home.”

Upon cross-examination, Lizzie Douglas was asked by Laura Scott’s attorney, Mr. Taylor: “But you didn’t see her take the clock?”
Lizzie: “No.”
Attorney Taylor: “As a matter of fact, you don’t know that she did steal it, do you?”
Lizzie: “It couldn’t a jumped down off of there and walked away.”
Attorney: “What time did the defendant leave the house on San Julian street?”
Lizzie: “How could I know that? The clock was gone, and there wasn’t no way to tell the time.”

Rosa Goldberg, who owned a pawn shop with her husband on First Street, was called to the stand by the Prosecution. The L.A. Times reported on her testimony:

“Where is your store,” asked Deputy District Attorney Blair.
“At First and Alameda streets.”
“In Los Angeles?” pursued the prosecutor.
“Of course,” returned the witness, with an air of pitying his ignorance.
When it was the defense’s turn, attorney Taylor representing Laura Scott, “asked the witness how she could identify that clock.” “Isn’t it just like thousands of others you can buy at jewelry stores for 75 cents?”
Mrs. Goldberg: “I never bought any at a jewelry store. I paid 25 cents for that one.”
“But how do you know that is the one?” persisted the attorney.
“That is the clock,” Mrs. Goldberg replied decidedly.

Attorney Taylor also tried to impeach the credibility of the detectives who arrested Laura Scott by claiming that they “tricked her into making admissions.” However officer Glen testified that it was Laura who had told them where they could recover the clock. He added that she offered to pay for it. It took two hours for the jury to come back with a guilty verdict against Laura. The L.A. Times described her disposition during the trial and her reaction to the verdict:

“Laura Scott showed little feeling when the verdict was announced, and not much at any other time during the trial except one. That was when her attorney, in his argument, spoke of her as Ada Scott. She whispered sharply to him across the table with every show of anger: ‘Laura Scott’. And to her friend Ada Stanley, she remarked, ‘The fool’.”

Because she had a prior conviction of larceny, the offense that she was convicted of became a felony. However, her friends who had packed the courtroom on April 8th, would “plead for a probation sentence instead of a penitentiary term (L.A. Herald, 4/9/1907).” There are no records of her being incarcerated at San Quentin in 1907 so this leads me to think that she was either sentenced to county jail or given probation. I am still investigating the sentence.

The L.A. Herald in reporting on this case pointed out that the trial “cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 to the county and probably nearly as much to the woman’s friends.” $200 in 1913 is the equivalent of $4,544.22 in 2011. This suggests that $200 in 1907 would easily be worth more than $5,000 today. It seems like a waste of valuable resources to have tried a woman for stealing an alarm clock worth 25 cents at a cost of about $10,000 (to the state and to the defendant). This example underscores the point that the American legal system has always been wasteful and irrational.

I am so excited that Slavery By Another Name will premiere on PBS on Feb 13th at 9 p.m. Eastern. It is one of my favorite non-fiction books…

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Other state agencies cover billions in corrections expenses

State taxpayers pay, on average, 14 percent more on prisons than corrections department budgets reflect, according to a report released today by the Vera Institute for Justice. The report, The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers, found that among the 40 states that responded to a survey, the total fiscal year 2010 taxpayer cost of prisons was $38.8 billion, $5.4 billion more than in state corrections budgets for that year. When all costs are considered, the annual average taxpayer cost in these states was $31,166 per inmate.

While it is common knowledge that some prison costs are tracked outside their budgets, The Price of Prisons marks the first time these costs have been quantified for prisons across the states. To calculate the total price of prisons, Vera developed a survey tool that tallied costs outside corrections budgets. The most common of these costs were fringe benefits, underfunded contributions for corrections employees’ pension and retiree health care plans, inmate health care, capital projects, legal costs, and inmate education and training.

“This new tool changes the equation. It paints a far more accurate picture of the costs to taxpayers,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project at the Pew Center on the States. “State leaders already have been questioning whether corrections spending passes the cost-benefit test, especially for nonviolent offenders.”

The scale of the expenditures outside of corrections departments ranged from less than 1 percent of the total cost of Arizona’s prison budget to as much as 34 percent in Connecticut. For example, the Connecticut Department of Corrections spent $613.3 million for prisons in fiscal year 2010; when all state costs are included, the total taxpayer cost was $929.4 million. The main outside costs were pension contributions ($147.1 million) and employee fringe benefits, including health insurance ($104.2 million). (For more information, see the fact sheets for states that completed the survey at www.vera.org/priceofprisons .)

The study found the following range of prison costs outside states’ corrections budgets in 2010:

20 to 34 percent in six states: Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas;

10 to 19.9 percent in nine states: Arkansas, California, Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Washington, and West Virginia; and

5 to 9.9 percent in nine states and less than 5 percent in 16 states.

“As states continue to deal with serious budget constraints, it’s critical that policy makers, corrections officials, taxpayers, and legislators know exactly what their prisons cost,” says Vera director Michael Jacobson. “Many states are moving toward reserving incarceration for the most dangerous people and using proven strategies to improve public safety at a lower cost.”

To help policy makers manage prison costs, the report identifies a number of measures that states have taken to reduce spending while maintaining public safety. Options include modifying sentencing and release policies, strengthening strategies to reduce recidivism, and boosting operating efficiencies.

The publication is based on a survey conducted in August 2011 by Vera’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit, in partnership with the Pew Public Safety Performance Project. The report includes detailed methodology that state officials may use to calculate the full taxpayer price of prisons each year.

SOURCE Pew Center on the States
REPORT: http://www.vera.org/download?file=3407/the-price-of-prisons.pdf
Download the report and fact sheets for each participating state at www.vera.org/priceofprisons.

PARTICIPATING STATES: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho. Illinois
Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland Michigan, Minnesota ,Missouri ,Montana ,Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma , Pennsylvania Rhode Island Texas, Utah, Vermont ,Virginia, Washington, West Virginia , Wisconsin
Copyright (C) 2012 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

Yesterday, the Sentencing Project released a new report about private prisons titled “Too Good To Be True.”

The report details the history of private prisons in America, documents the increase in their use, and examines their supposed benefits. Among the report’s major findings:

1. From 1999 to 2010 the use of private prisons increased by 40 percent at the state level and by 784 percent in the federal prison system.

2. In 2010 seven states housed more than a quarter of their prison population in private facilities.

3. Claims of private prisons’ cost effectiveness are overstated and largely illusory.

4. The services provided by private prisons are generally inferior to those found in publicly operated facilities.

5. Private prison companies spend millions of dollars each year attempting to influence policy at the state and federal level.

The following table shows the dramatic increase in prisoners held in private prisons in the U.S. over the last decade:

Prisoners Held in Private Prisons in the United States

I am grateful to a young man who sent this over to me last month. I have been listening to it often. Below is the video from Akala titled “Fire in the Booth.” It is 8 minutes long but you really should listen to the entire thing. You can thank me later.

Here is the song again but this time with the lyrics on screen:

From Chicago Magazine (1/12)

I am serving on the advisory board for an upcoming exhibition about the history of the Conservative Vice Lords in Chicago. This will be a community-based exhibition in North Lawndale and is being curated by former CVL members, other partners and the Jane Addams Hull House Museum. So I have been thinking a little about the concept of “gangs” and their connection to violence lately.

Yesterday, Davey D shared some new music videos addressing current social issues. One of these is by Lupe Fiasco titled “Double Burger with Cheese.”

Davey D had this to say about Lupe’s new video:

His newest offering is to a song called Double Burger w/ Cheese where he goes in the power of images and how they may have impacted several generations of Black Youth.. The video starts off by showing footage from the 1965 Watts Riots and then juxtaposes it with an array of videos and images from movies in the early to mid 90s that focus both on South Central LA and the crack era..

We see footage from everything like; Juice, Menace II Society, Boyz N The Hood, New Jersey Drive, Poetic Justice, Dead Presidents, South Central, Sugar Hill, New Jack City, Paid In Full, & Colors. Although many of the movies shown have strong anti-gang messages, many of us have come to romanticize and glorify the gang drama and trauma shown in them..

I want to pick up on Davey D’s last point because I think that it is a particularly interesting one. If it is true that some people of color have internalized and romanticize gang drama and trauma, what impact does this have in our communities? Is the argument that these images make young people of color more prone to turn to violence themselves? Do the images have a desensitizing effect on those who watch them?

I actually think that these images have more impact on the dominant culture than on marginalized young people. Robin D. G. Kelley (2000) has written that:

“The mainstream media have [sic] employed metaphors of war and occupation to describe America’s inner cities. The recasting of poor urban Black communities as war zones was brought to us on NBC Nightly News, Dan Rather’s special report “48 Hours: On Gang Street,” Hollywood films like Colors and Boyz N the Hood, and a massive media blitz that has been indispensable in creating and criminalizing the so-called underclass (p.24).”

In other words, according to Kelley, the very images referenced in Lupe Fiasco’s video, were critical to creating and criminalizing the underclass in the American public imagination. These images help to legitimize the militarization of police forces and to justify tough-on-crime policies. Sociologist Zygmunt Bauman correctly points to the futility and vicious cycle of increased police repression in marginalized communities: “The sole effect of extemporary police actions is to render the need of further police actions yet more pressing: police actions, so to speak, excel in reproducing their own necessity.” A far better approach would be to address the root causes of violence in marginalized communities. Yet this gets short-shrift.

When I discuss gangs with my students, I often screen a documentary titled “Crips and Bloods: Made in America.” In particular, I like to show a clip that makes explicit the connection between economic disinvestment and the rise of gangs.

Commenting on the street violence in South Central LA in the film, Tom Hayden says: “It’s been defined as a crime problem and a gang problem, but it’s really an issue of no work and dysfunctional schools.” This is basically where I come down too. However, I know that others would offer their own ideas about the root causes of gang culture. If you have the chance, I highly recommend watching the entire documentary.

I write a lot about the history of the convict leasing system on this blog. I don’t think we can properly consider U.S.labor, racial, or penal history without a thorough understanding of that pernicious system.

After chasing many immigrants off resulting in tons of agriculture jobs being unfilled, the state of Alabama has a bright new/old idea. The state is considering using prisoners to fill the void left by the flight of immigrant labor:

“Agriculture officials in Alabama are looking into using prisoners to fill a labor shortage that the agency blames on the state’s controversial new law targeting undocumented immigrants.

The Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries is meeting with south Alabama farmers and businesses in Mobile on Tuesday. Deputy commissioner Brett Hall says the agenda includes a presentation on whether work-release inmates could help fill jobs once held by immigrants.

Hall says planting season is coming up, and some growers fear most of their workers are gone. The agriculture agency says the new law has caused a chronic labor shortage on Alabama farms.”

Anyone who knows anything about Alabama’s sordid history of convict leasing should not be surprised that the state would turn to prisoners to do the back-breaking work that others will not do.

Mary Ellen Curtin’s excellent study about black prisoners in late 19th century Alabama illuminates episodes in American history that are pretty much unknown to us. Curtin contends that Alabama Democrats in the late 1800s turned to the convict lease system to address the state’s financial troubles. Coal companies were happy to make use of this convict labor but they were not the primary force pushing the practice. Curtin suggests that the lease system in Alabama left a lasting legacy:

“In the words of Populist critic William H. Skaggs, the lease was ‘vile,’ ‘pernicious,’ ‘excrable,’ ‘venal,’ and ‘brutal.’ It perpetuated ‘despotism’ by binding Alabama’s mineral interests to its political elite. It held the legal system hostage to the crass self-interest of county sheriffs, who collected fees for every prisoner they arrested, and politicians, who refused to forgo revenue paid for in human suffering. It linked race and criminality in a new and powerful way. It generated peonage by forcing convicted individuals to escape prison by allowing a local white landowner to pay their fine and thus control their labor. The lease shaped Alabama’s political economy and contributed to the legalized repression of African Americans during the age of segregation. Government officials and corporations willingly and knowingly traded prisoner’s lives for profit and revenue (p.10).”

Now that the state of Alabama has run off the undocumented workers who were willing to take on back-breaking agricultural work, they are planning to return to their tried and true ways of exploiting prisoners. We should remember Alabama’s history and legacy of convict leasing and we should strongly oppose a reinvented version of that system. We should reject trading the lives of undocumented immigrants for the lives of prisoners.

A big part of my mission on this blog is to feature examples of alternatives to incarceration. It is often difficult to find such stories reported in the news. The news prefers subscribe to the “if it bleeds, it leads” motto. Back in January of this year, I featured a story of restorative justice involving a mugging victim.

Now comes this story from the Cincinnati Enquirer:

Wearing his hard hat and a sheen of sweat, Danny Pabst stepped away from the locomotive and watched as Michael Morgan swung a sledgehammer like a baseball bat, smashing it into a metal rod held by his older brother, William Morgan.

Grunt, clang. Grunt, clang. Grunt, clang.

The Morgan brothers, Pabst and others were trying to dislodge a rusted, bent, 3-inch-thick metal pin. It was connecting a piece to the exterior of a 60-year-old locomotive being renovated in a Norwood rail yard.

After 30 minutes of sledge swinging and oath uttering, the pin finally was freed.

“I like the work that they do,” a panting Pabst said of William, 34, and Michael Morgan, 30.

He likes their work so much, he’s decided to hire them.

But Pabst wasn’t as enamored of them in April, when the brothers broke into the rail yard – where Pabst restores privately owned, historic passenger railway cars at his Cincinnati and Ohio Railway Services company – and stole $7,000 in copper cables.

The seven cables, so heavy that the brothers also stole a plastic 55-gallon garbage can to carry them in, are the electrical umbilical cords that connect rail cars.

Police were unaware of the theft when they saw the Morgan brothers at about 4 p.m. April 28 on railroad tracks burning rubber coatings off cables to get to the copper wire. But when Pabst reported the theft the next day, police immediately made the connection.

They went to a nearby scrap yard, where workers told police they had paid $454.50 for copper brought in by William Morgan, who signed the receipt and was on video scrapping the copper.

The copper cables were being hauled by William Morgan in a gray garbage can just like the one Pabst said had also been stolen, scrap yard workers told police.

Arrests weren’t new to the brothers. William Morgan, a former iron worker, had been to prison once. Michael Morgan, who did odd jobs, had been twice. All were theft-related convictions.

They stole from Pabst, William Morgan said, because their father is ill and receives hospice care.

“Our dad’s dying of cancer and we’re trying to keep the (family) house,” William Morgan said.

The brothers, who live just blocks away, know the rail yard well.

“They’ve been running us out of here since we were kids,” William Morgan said with a laugh.

When they came to court in August, Pabst asked if they had cash to repay him the $7,000.

Because they had no money, Pabst offered a suggestion.

As attorney Greg Nolan, who represented Michael Morgan in his receiving-stolen property case, put it: “The words out of Danny’s mouth were, ‘These jerks, if they just would have only come to me in the daylight hours, I would have hired them. I’m desperate for help.’

“Given the number of copper thefts and the amount here, there was a good chance both of these gentlemen were going to jail.”

Pabst, though, persuaded Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman to place the brothers on probation so they could work off their debt to him.

“That’s amazing,” the judge said. “That’s a first. We don’t have that very often, where guys steal stuff and then actually come back and work for the victim, pay them back by working for them.”

The judge put the brothers on probation for a year so they could pay off the debt.

Read the rest of the story here.