In the early twentieth century, the brutality of southern prisons became a national scandal. Prisoners toiled in grueling, violent conditions while housed in crude dormitories on what were effectively slave plantations. This system persisted until the 1940s when, led by Texas, southern states adopted northern prison design reforms. Texas presented the reforms to the public as modern, efficient, and disciplined. Inside prisons, however, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, intensifying the labor division that privileged some prisoners with the power to accelerate state-orchestrated brutality and the internal sex trade. Reformers' efforts had only made things worse--now it was up to the prisoners to fight for change. Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Robert T. Chase narrates the struggle to change prison from within. Prisoners forged an alliance with the NAACP to contest the constitutionality of Texas prisons. Behind bars, a prisoner coalition of Chicano Movement and Black Power organizations publicized their deplorable conditions as "slaves of the state" and initiated a prison-made civil rights revolution and labor protest movement. These insurgents won epochal legal victories that declared conditions in many southern prisons to be cruel and unusual--but their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book weaves together untold but devastatingly important truths from the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States as it narrates the transition from prison plantations of the past to the mass incarceration of today.
Robert T. Chase is associate professor of history at Stony Brook University.
"A complex story, expertly told from a prodigious body of sources. . . . Chase's We Are Not Slaves tells a multifaceted story of the often untold, or at the very least unacknowledged, resilience of bondage in the post-slavery and even post-civil rights eras. At the same time, We Are Not Slaves is also a story of the boundless capacity and resilience of humans--even the supposedly undeserved. The TDC prisoners' rights movement is a template for all of seeking 'freedom.' Using political protest, labor strikes, testimonies, and legal writing, they bear witness to their own humanity."--Shannon King, Black Perspectives "A rare look at prison conditions and organized activism as told by those held in custody."--Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books "A remarkably detailed and far-reaching account of postwar Texas prison life characterized by extraordinary resistance in the face of pervasive brutality."--Journal of American History "A stunning work of history. Drawing on a rich body of sources including lawsuits, internal prison documents, and an impressive 100 oral histories, Robert Chase demonstrates how an interracial movement of imprisoned people dismantled Texas's brutal plantation model of punishment, which was rooted in coerced labor, sexual violence, and racial hierarchy. . . . In unflinching prose, Chase recounts the haunting stories of imprisoned people who endured rape and abuse at the hands of other prisoners. By reading internal prison documents alongside imprisoned people's own words, Chase pushes back against the older body of sociological scholarship that attributed such acts to prisoners' own 'pathology.' He convincingly shows that Texas prison administrators helped produce such violence by enabling and even encouraging it."--Amanda Hughett, Black Perspectives "An ambitious, deeply researched, and persuasive account of the Texas prison system in the period from the 1940s-1980s. . . . Chase provides one of the most in-depth accounts we have yet had of sexual violence among incarcerated men--a topic many historians of sexuality have touched upon but few have attempted to examine in depth, largely because of the apparent paucity of readily available manuscript sources. Yet Chase's combing of state records and the massive archive produced by Ruiz proves it can be done."--Timothy Stewart-Winter, Black Perspectives "An outstanding work that will provoke discussion and undoubtedly inspire other studies as this country seeks solutions to problems that stem from the nation's experience with incarceration."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly "Chase's brilliant inquiry focuses on the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) but references correctional practices in other southern states."--CHOICE "Drawing from three decades of legal documents compiled by prisoners, Chase narrates the struggle to change prisons from within. . . . He finds that these insurgents won epochal legal victories but that their movement was overwhelmed by the increasing militarization of the prison system and empowerment of white supremacist gangs that, together, declared war on prison organizers."--Law and Social Inquiry "Successfully marries historical analysis to carceral studies. Chase extends the timeline of incarceration in the United States, picking up from convict leasing to draw broader connections over the longue duree of caged and carceral labor. . . . A welcome contribution to the shift in the discourse of prisoners' rights toward activism and the agency of incarcerated folks."--H-Nationalism "The most thorough and sophisticated look at the Texas prison system of the twentieth century. Chase blends legal and social history, together with sociology and ethnic and gender studies, to place incarcerated people at the center of the tremendous, if bleak, transformations of the state's prisons from plantation barbarism to high-tech isolation. . . . From sexual violence and coerced labor to worker's strikes and lawsuits, from the 'massive resistance' authorities displayed to respecting the human rights of incarcerated people to the internecine violence among prisoners, We Are Not Slaves chronicles the daily rhythms of this carceral capitol with chilling insight."--Dan Berger, Black Perspectives
