Article contents
Reform versus Reality in the Progressive Era Texas Prison1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 November 2010
Extract
The state of Texas' determined effort to keep African-Americans performing plantation labor was at the heart of its prison farm system, from Reconstruction through the 1920s. State and penitentiary officials followed a practice of racialized labor control, demanding that African-American convicts perform plantation gang labor, not only to make the prison system profitable but also keep them involved in extractive agriculture. As the prison population grew, so did the abuse of convicts. The story of Texas’ penitentiary system shows the continuing tie between African-Americans, plantation labor, and racism in Texas, as well as other southern states. The sprawling farm system that developed in Texas made it unique in the South. When Progressive Era reformers confronted abuses in the Texas prison system, they had to contend with an overwhelming profit motive that made reform difficult, and warped reform measures they managed to push through the legislature. Among the initial goals of Texas prison reformers were an end to convict leasing and a ban on the use of the whip as punishment. The agenda of reformers collided with the goals of the Texas prison system, with unexpected results. Looking at reform measures after they passed the legislature illustrates how prison managers tried to circumvent regulations that hindered profitability.
- Type
- Essays: Graduate Research Forum
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2005
References
2 Reformers also addressed the issues of sexual abuse of female convicts, poor housing and food, and education for convicts. See the Report of the Penitentiary Investigating Committee, 1909, Published by Order of the House of Representatives, August 1910. (Hereafter cited as Investigating Committee, 1910)
3 For examples in other southern states, see: Iichtenstein, Alex, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Tabor in the New South (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; Fierce, Milfred C., Slavery Revisited: Blacks and the Convict Lease System, 1865–1933 (New York, 1994)Google Scholar; Mancini, Matthew, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia, 1996)Google Scholar; Oshinsky, David M., Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice (New York, 1996)Google Scholar; McKelvey, Blake, “A Half Century of Southern Penal Exploitation,” Social Forces 13 (October 13, 1934)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 In 1850 there were only three inmates in the Huntsville prison and by 1860 there were only 182 state prisoners. The 489 figure in 1870 does not take into account the number of convicts held in county jails, of which there were surely many.
5 Biennial Report of the Texas Penitentiary System, 1870, p. 43Google Scholar; 1880, p. 23; 1900, p. 8; 1912, p. 32. (Hereafter cited as Report)
6 Elisha Marshall Pease, The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/PP/fpe8.html.
7 , Walker, Penology for Profit, 16.Google Scholar
8 Ibid.
9 James Webb Throckmorton, The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/TT/fth36.html.
10 , Walker, Penology for Profit, 22.Google Scholar
11 , Walker, Penology for Profit, 24.Google Scholar
12 Report, 1876 and Johnson, William, “A Short History of the Sugar Industry in Texas,” Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association Publications 5 (April 1961): 19.Google Scholar
13 , Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 171.Google Scholar
14 Richard Coke, The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/CC/fco15.html.
15 , Walker, Penology for Profit, 37–38.Google Scholar
16 Report, 1878.
17 , Johnson, “A Short History,” 42.Google Scholar
18 , Mancini, One Dies, Get Another, 177–78.Google Scholar
19 Report and Proceedings of the State Investigating Committee, 1902. (Hereafter cited as Investigating Committee, 1902).
20 Report, 1882.
21 Miller, Edmund T., A Financial History of Texas (Austin, 1916), 405.Google Scholar
22 Report, 1880.
23 , Carleton, Politics and Punishment, 7.Google Scholar
24 , McKelvey, “A Half Century of Southern Penal Exploitation,” 113.Google Scholar
25 Gould, Lewis L., The Progressive Era (Syracuse, 1974), 2–3.Google Scholar
26 Zimmerman, Jane, “The Penal Reform Movement in the South during the Progressive Era, 1890–1917,” Journal of Southern History 17 (November 1951): 490.Google Scholar
21 Report, 1884.
28 Wharton, Clarence R., Wharton's History of Fort Bend County (San Antonio, 1939), 228.Google Scholar
29 Report 1910, p. 3.
30 Report, 1910, p. 3.
31 Report, 1928, p. 8. The farms included: Eastham, Ferguson, Blue Ridge, Harlem, Imperial, Clemens, Darrington, Ramsey, Retrieve, Wynne, Goree (the women's prison, which did very little farming), and the recendy abandoned Shaw Farm.
32 San Antonio Express, December 5, 1908-January 11, 1909 and “Eminent Banker, Editor, Orator is Dead in Dallas,” Obituary for George Waverly Briggs, Texas Bankers Record, August 1957.
33 Finty, Thomas Jr, “The Texas Prison Investigation,” The Survey, 23 (December 1909): 387.Google Scholar
34 For example, see Wilkinson, J.L., The Trans-Cedar Lynching and the Texas Penitentiary; being a plain account of the lynching and the circumstances leading up to it, also a presentation of conditions as they exist in our state penitentiaries (Dallas, no date given).Google Scholar
35 , Walker, Penology for Profit, 183–184.Google Scholar
36 First Annual Report of the Society for the Friendless, Texas Division, 1906–1907, (Dallas, 1907), 6.Google Scholar
37 Investigating Committee, 1910, p. 876.Google Scholar
38 , Finty, “The Texas Prison Investigation,” p. 388.Google Scholar
39 George Waverly Briggs, The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/BB/fbr48.html
40 San Antonio Express, December 5, 1908-January 12, 1909, and Grantham, Dewey W., Southern Progressivism: The Reconciliation of Progress and Tradition, (Knoxville, 1983), 131.Google Scholar
41 Investigative Committee, 1910.Google Scholar
42 Investigative Committee, 1910, 566–567.
43 Investigative Committee, 1910, 567.
44 An Act Establishing a Prison System in the State of Texas (Austin, 1910), 1–7.Google Scholar(Hereafter cited as Prison Rfform Act, 1910).
45 , Grantham, Southern Progressivism, 131.Google Scholar
46 , Finty, “The Texas Prison Investigation,” 387.Google Scholar
47 Tom Finty, Jr., “Our Penal System and Its Purposes: A Discussion of Conditions and Compilation of Information Concerning the Texas Penitentiary and the Penal Institutions of Various Other States and Federal Government,” Galveston-Dalias News, 1909, Introduction and Tom Finty, The Handbook of Texas Online, http://www.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/FF/ffi14.html.
48 , Finry, “Our Penal System,” 388.Google Scholar
49 , Finty, “Our Penal System,” 390.Google Scholar
50 Miller, Worth Robert, “Building a Progressive Coalition in Texas: The Populists-Reform Democratic Rapprochement, 1900–1907” Journal of Southern History, 52 (May, 1986): 163–82CrossRefGoogle Scholarand Tinsley, James Aubrey, “The Progressive Movement in Texas” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1953)Google Scholar.
51 Gould, Lewis L., Progressives and Prohibitionists: Texas Democrats in the Wilson Era (Austin, 1973), 41.Google Scholar
52 , Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 41.Google Scholar
53 Colquitt won by a plurality of votes, as the Democrats were sharply divided over the Prohibition issue., Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 7.Google Scholar
54 Prison Reform Act, 1910.
55 , Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 41.Google Scholar
56 , Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 87.Google Scholar
57 , Gould, Progressives and Prohibitionists, 26Google Scholarand Lucko, Paul M., “Texas Prison Reform During the Oscar Branch Colquitt Administration: 1911–1914” unpublished paper, Barker Texas History Center, University of Texas at Austin, 1987, p. 5Google Scholar.
58 San Antonio Express, December 18, 1908.
59 San Antonio Express, December 19, 1908.
60 San Antonio Express, December 17, 1908.
61 For an example of a lease agreement, see “Contract for Ball-Hutchings with the Penitentiary,” August 1895, folder 28-0039 at the Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.
62 Finty, Tom Jr, “Troubles of the Texas State Prisons,” The Delinquent 3 (December 1913 and January 1914): 5–10.Google Scholar
63 , Lucko, “Texas Prison Reform,” 6.Google Scholar
64 , Lucko, “Texas Prison Reform,” 17.Google Scholar
65 , Finty, “Troubles in the Texas State Prisons,” 4–5.Google Scholar
66 Messages of Governor O.B. Colquitt to the Thirty-Third Texas State “Legislature, 1912, 68.
67 , Finty, “The Troubles in the Texas State Prisons,” 5.Google Scholar
68 Senate Journal of the State of Texas, January 30, 1913, 297.
69 Investigating Committee, 1913, 51.
70 Investigating Committee, 1913, 36.
71 Investigating Committee, 1913, 37.
72 Investigating Committee, 1913, 37.
73 Investigating Committee, 1913, 37.
74 Investigating Committee, 1913, 37.
75 Investigating Committee, 1913, 57.
76 Investigating Committee, 1913, 57.
77 Investigating Committee, 1913, 262.
78 The Houston Chronicle, September 8, 1913. (Hereafter cited as Chronicle)
79 Chronicle, September 8, 1913
80 Chronicle, September 8, 1913.
81 Chronicle, September 8, 1913, and Houston Daily Post September 8, 1913 (Hereafter cited as Post).
82 Chronicle, September 9, 1913
83 Conduct Ledger of the Texas Penitentiary System. Any random sampling of the punishments in the Conduct Ledgers, for any of the years from 1875 through 1928 will show punishment for slow work or insubordination.
84 , Finty, “Troubles of the Texas State Prisons,” 1–5Google Scholar, and Investigating Committee, 1913, 262Google Scholar.
85 Chronicle, September 9, 1913.
86 Post, September 9, 1913.
87 Chronicle, September 8, 1913.
88 Houston Post, September 3, 1913.
89 Post, September 3, 1913.
90 Chronicle, September 11, 1913.
91 Gould, , Progressives and Prohibitionist, 30–34.Google Scholar
- 2
- Cited by