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AFRICAN AMERICANS AND PAROLE IN DEPRESSION-ERA NEW YORK*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2011

JAMES CAMPBELL
JAMES CAMPBELL*
Affiliation:
University of Leicester
*
School of Historical Studies, University of Leicester, University Road, Leicester LE1 7RH[email protected]
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Abstract

In the first half of the twentieth century, parole in the Deep South of the United States was part of a nexus of penal mechanisms providing white employers with a pliant black labour force. By contrast, in New York, which was at the forefront of innovations in parole policy, there was a surprising interracial consensus among white parole administrators and politicians, civil rights activists, and black prisoners themselves that the African American community was integral to parole administration and success. This article explores why different constituencies supported this consensus through debates on parole in the black press and via the desperate, and invariably futile, letters that prisoners wrote to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). These sources also indicate that, for black prisoners in New York, African American influence over the parole system was routinely constrained by widespread black poverty, racial segregation, and discrimination in employment.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 1065 - 1086
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Kate Dossett, Alex Lichtenstein and the journal's anonymous reviewers for comments and suggestions at different stages of this article's development. I am also grateful to the British Association of American Studies and the British Academy for funding my research in the United States.

References

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26 The NAACP parole letters include 130 cases concerning prisoners incarcerated in New York across fifteen different institutions, including Attica, Auburn, Clinton, Sing Sing, Elmira Reformatory, Napanoch Institution for Male Defective Delinquents, and Rikers Island. Most prisoners wrote directly to the NAACP, though in a small number of cases a third party wrote on a prisoner's behalf. Prisoners who were not seeking employment included Bert Gaylord who wanted the NAACP's help to get hold of a copy of the prison rules and regulations for the Virginia prison where his son was serving a life sentence so he could learn how to apply for parole. Thomas Johnson wanted the aid of an attorney to push his case for parole or a pardon and was referred to his local branch in Asheville, North Carolina, while in other cases, a prisoner was uncertain when he was due for release or believed he had been confined beyond the expiration of his sentence. Bert Gaylord to Walter White, 17 June 1944, and Henry Green to Walter White, 30 July 1944, NAACP, B:111, F3; Thomas Johnson to Walter White, 8 Sept. 1941, NAACP B:111, F6.

27 Case of John Jones, NAACP B:111, F7. In practice, the NAACP also rarely represented men at trial unless the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to their innocence. Rise, Eric W., ‘Race, rape, and radicalism: the case of the Martinsville 7, 1949–1951’, Journal of Southern History, 58 (1992), p. 473Google Scholar.

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30 Gertrude Coffin to ‘Committee of 100’, 14 Feb. 1945, NAACP B:110, F9. Coffin's relationship to Charles is unknown.

31 Willie James to Walter White, 25 Sept. 1939, NAACP B:137, F2.

32 E.g. Thurgood Marshall to Christopher Emmet, 29 Oct. 1945, NAACP B:111, F19; Dr J. McClendon, president Detroit Branch to Walter White, 16 Dec. 1940, NAACP B:111, F11.

33 Even in the 1970s, prisoners still depended on sources such as newspapers and out-of-date telephone directories to find the addresses of potential employers. See McCay Commission, Rochester Hearings, 12 Apr. 1972 (Afternoon), part 1. http://www.albany.edu/talkinghistory/attica/documents/mckay-4–12–72-pm1-p99–122.pdf.

34 Absom Pettiway to Walter White, 24 Feb. 1948, NAACP B:111, F16; Robert Jefferson to NAACP Legal Bureau, 8 July 1947, NAACP B:111, F6.

35 Ethel Williams to NAACP, 23 Feb. 1941, NAACP B:111, F23.

36 Oscar Martinez to NAACP, 21 Aug. 1947, NAACP B:111, F11.

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41 Joseph Jackson to Reeves, 14 May 1942, NAACP B:111, F6.

42 The Crisis, Apr. 1931, p. 136.

43 New York Amsterdam News, 27 July, 3 Aug. 1932.

44 Far from being abandoned by the black community, one of the Scottsboro Boys, Haywood Patterson, recorded in his autobiography that he received money and gifts from all over the nation during his incarceration, enabling him to buy protection and even run his own prison store. Haywood Patterson and Earl Conrad, Scottsboro boy (London, 1966).

45 The Crisis, Apr. 1932, p. 132.

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48 Conservative black leaders had long adopted tough law and order policies to combat white associations of race and criminality. For example, during the 1890s and early 1900s, elements of the black press called for swift and severe punishment of alleged black rapists, including castration, as a way to discourage lynching. See Wasserman, Ira, How the American media packaged lynching (1850–1940): constructing the meaning of social events (Lewiston, NY, 2006), pp. 134–5Google Scholar.

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51 Mack, , ‘Rethinking civil rights lawyering’, p. 280; Michael J. Klarman, ‘Civil rights litigation and social reform’, Yale Law Journal (The Pocket Part), Nov. 2005, http://www.yalelawjournal.org/the-yale-law-journal-pocket-part/civil-rights-litigation-and-social-reformGoogle Scholar

52 There are parallels here with Lucia Trimbur's recent ethnographic research among men of colour at a gym in New York City who had served time in prison. Whether they attempted to go straight or returned to crime, Trimbur argues that these men conceived of successful re-entry as something they would have to achieve themselves and they distrusted institutional support. Trimbur, Lucia, ‘ “Me and the law is not friends”: how former prisoners make sense of reentry’, Qualitative Sociology, 32 (2009), p. 275CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 ‘Samuel J. Battle Testimonial Dinner’, NAACP B:111: F24.

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55 Nathaniel J. Humphries to Walter White, 5 June 1941; Henry W. Pope to Walter White, 17 June 1941; John N. Griggs to Walter White, 4 June 1941, NAACP B111, F24. On the NAACP's commitment to intraracial progress as opposed to integration in the 1930s and 1940s, see Mack, ‘Rethinking civil rights lawyering’, p. 280.

56 New York Amsterdam Star-News, 30 Aug. 1941, p. 14.

57 New York Amsterdam News, 13 Jan. 1940, p. 9.

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62 New York Amsterdam News, 6 Jan. 1940.

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71 Simon, Poor discipline, pp. 139–44. While recognizing the distinctive disadvantages of impoverished and segregated communities that many black parolees encounter, some recent studies note that the experiences leading to parole can also ‘have a levelling effect’ that contributes to relatively homogeneous experiences of parole across racial and ethnic lines. See Merry Morash, Women on probation and parole: a feminist critique of community programs and services (Lebanon, NH, 2010), pp. 53–8, and National Research Council (US), Parole, desistance from crime, and community integration (Washington, DC, 2008), p. 74.

72 Trimbur, ‘“Me and the law is not friends”: how former prisoners make sense of reentry’, p. 275.