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A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.
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The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.
by Justin Hawkins via Made By History on January 31, 2025
A group of black prisoners, shoveling.

Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment

Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.
by Daryl Michael Scott, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on September 21, 2023
Aerial view of Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, 19th century.

Untangling the 19th Century Roots of Mass Incarceration

Popular accounts often trace the origins of forced penal labor to the post-Civil War South. But a vast system of forced penal labor existed in the antebellum North.
by Rebecca McLennan via LPE Project on May 16, 2023
Zoomed in 1949 map of Atlanta.

A Brief History of the Atlanta City Prison Farm

Slave labor, overcrowding, and unmarked graves — the buried history of Atlanta City Prison Farm from the 1950s to 1990s shows it’s no place of honor.
via Atlanta Community Press Collective on August 14, 2021

Let’s Recognize the African-American Prisoners Who Helped Build America

Without them, the economy of the American South would never would have recovered after the Civil War.
by Talitha L. LeFlouria via The Root on February 26, 2019

California Wildfires Have Been Fought by Prisoners Since World War II

The war had turned forestry work into a form of civil defense, and prisoners a new army on the home front.
by Volker Janssen via HISTORY on November 13, 2018

The Origins of Prison Slavery

How Southern whites found replacements for their emancipated slaves in the prison system.
by Shane Bauer via Slate on October 2, 2018
Illustration of the folk hero, John Henry, face down with a hammer in his hand.

A History of American Protest Music: This Is the Hammer That Killed John Henry

How a folk hero inspired one of the most covered songs in American history.
by Tom Maxwell via Longreads on October 4, 2017
A line of prison laborers by a railroad.

“One Continuous Graveyard”: Emancipation and the Birth of the Professional Police Force

After emancipation, prison labor replaced slavery as a way for white Southerners to enforce a racial hierarchy.
by Keri Leigh Merritt via Black Perspectives on July 11, 2016
Prisoners hoeing a field at Cummins Prison Farm in Arkansas, 1972.

Prison Plantations

One man’s archive of a vanished culture.
by Maurice Chammah via The Marshall Project on May 1, 2015

The Hidden History of ALEC and Prison Labor

Years after ALEC's Truth In Sentencing bills became law, its Prison Industries Act has quietly expanded prison labor nationwide.
by Mike Elk, Bob Sloan via The Nation on August 1, 2011

Slavery Is Not a Metaphor

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, southern slaveholders were thinking about what a prison should look like for a society that was economically and socially dependent on slavery.
by John Bardes, Melanie Newport via Public Books on February 12, 2025
A line of workmen drilling.

A Prison the Size of the State, A Police to Control the World

Two new books examine how colonial logic has long been embedded within US carceral systems.
by Marisol LeBrón via Public Books on December 17, 2024
Illustration of Frances Thompson, bordered by smoke from green candles, and a purple flower.

How a Disabled Black Trans Woman Left Her Mark on 19th-Century Memphis

For a brief moment in history, Frances Thompson was Memphis’ biggest scandal. Her life paints a different picture of our civil rights legacy.
by Justin A. Davis via The Emancipator on June 13, 2024
Ella Fitzgerald performs at Lorton Reformatory in 1959.

In the 1960s, Prison Chaplains Created a Star Studded Music Festival at Lorton Reformatory

Syncopation and swing reigned supreme at the annual Lorton Reformatory Jazz Festival in the 1960s.
by Dominique Mickiewitz via Boundary Stones on March 1, 2024
The Ferguson Unit Rhythmeer Band plays at the Jim Ferguson Unit in Madison County, Texas.

The Blues Behind Bars: How Southern Prisons Shaped American Music

Incarcerated musicians have crafted some of the most iconic songs in American music history while prisons reap the profits.
by Zeb Larson via Scalawag on June 8, 2023
Soldier in foliage drawing

How Prisoners Contributed During World War II

Prisoners not only supported the war effort in surprising ways during World War II, they fought and died in it.
by Morgan Godvin, David Dressler, Frank T. Flynn, Gordon Hawkins via JSTOR Daily on May 26, 2023
A Black soldier of the 12th Armored Division stands guard over a group of Nazi prisoners captured in the surrounding German forest, April 1945.

Prisoners Like Us: German POW and Black American Solidarity

During World War II, almost a half million POWs were interned in the United States, where they forged sympathetic relationships with Black American soldiers.
by Matthew Wills, Matthias Reiss via JSTOR Daily on February 25, 2023
African American prisoners in Alabama post-Reconstruction.

How the Slavery-Like Conditions of Convict Leasing Flourished After the Collapse of Reconstruction

On the terror that filled the void left by the retreat of federal authority in the South.
by Jefferson Cowie via Literary Hub on November 23, 2022
Photograph shows two white men overseeing African American men hammering boulders as others walk with wheelbarrows.

Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires

Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
by Margie Mason, Robin McDowell via AP News on September 19, 2022
Book cover for Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage," showing a photo of incarcerated men speaking to the media.

How Rikers Island Made New York

In “Captives,” former Rikers detainee Jarrod Shanahan traces the history of New York City’s sprawling jail complex, and its centrality to brutal class struggle.
by Jarrod Shanahan, Alana Mohamed via Hell Gate on May 16, 2022
Lithograph of Eastern State Penitentiary from above.

The Invention of Incarceration

Prisons have been controversial since their beginnings in the late 1700s — why do they keep failing to live up to expectations?
by Ashley Rubin, Greg Miller via JSTOR Daily on March 18, 2022
Photograph of prison warden T. M. Osborne and two other men in a penitentiary hallway.

Were Early American Prisons Similar to Today's?

A correctional officer’s history of 19th century prisons and modern-day parallels. From Sing Sing to suicide watch, torture treads a fine line.
by Charles Neal via JSTOR Daily on January 19, 2022
Johnny Cash in front of a microphone.

Johnny Cash Is a Hero to Americans on the Left and Right. But His Music Took a Side.

Listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears again.
by Michael Stewart Foley via Slate on December 7, 2021
Picture of a young woman with cannabis leaves.

The Pot to Prison Pipeline

How does a plant become a crime?
by Sophie Yanow, Zack Ruskin via The Nib on September 27, 2021
shovels stuck in black scribbles representing dirt

Eating Dirt, Searching Archives

There are many black afterlives that are yet to be unearthed.
by Endia Hayes via Southern Cultures on July 16, 2021
A prisoner behind bars

The Multiple Layers of the Carceral State

The devastating cruelties these stories reveal also contain a fundamental truth about prison.
by Dan Berger via Black Perspectives on January 11, 2021
abstract picture of buildings

City, Island

What does the way we mourn, remember, and care for our dead say about us?
by Alexandra Marvar via The Believer on October 1, 2020

Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Cover-Up of Racism, Violence, and Greed

Beneath the popular folk song, “Swannanoa Tunnel” and the railroad tracks that run through Western North Carolina is a story of blood, greed, and obfuscation.
by Kevin Kehrberg, Jeffrey A. Keith via The Bitter Southerner on August 4, 2020

Roaming Charges: Super Tuesday at Manzanar

A report from the site of a former concentration camp.
by Jeffrey St. Clair via CounterPunch on March 6, 2020
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