We are not slaves : state violence, coerced labor, and prisoners' rights in postwar America /

"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...

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Bibliographic Details
Online Access: Full text (MCPHS users only)
Main Author: Chase, Robert T. (Author)
Format: Electronic eBook
Language:English
Published: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, 2020
Series:Justice, power, and politics.
Subjects:
Local Note:ProQuest Ebook Central
Description
Summary:"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. However, the transition to penitentiary cells only made the endemic violence more secretive, and the 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. Told from the vantage point of the prisoners themselves, this book highlights untold but devastatingly important truths about the histories of labor, civil rights, and politics in the United States."--
Physical Description:1 online resource : illustrations, maps
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN:9781469653594
1469653591
Source of Description, Etc. Note:Online resource; title from resource home page (JSTOR, viewed December 21, 2020).