Nina Nevill on Robert T. Chase: We Are Not Slaves: State Violence

Robert T. Chase. We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners' Rights in Postwar America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. 544 pp. $37.50, cloth, ISBN 978-1-4696-5357-0. Reviewed by Nina Nevill (Rice University) Published on H-Nationalism (November, 2020) Commissioned by Evan C. Rothera (University of Arkansas - Fort Smith) In his detailed and innovative book, We Are carceral system through the perspective of the Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and abused rather than the abusers. Prisoners’ Rights in Postwar America, Robert T. Since their genesis, labor practices in southern Chase elucidates the mechanisms of violence that US prisons were designed to violently withhold the have enabled a capitalistic boom and total defi‐ civil and human rights of their prisoners. Planta‐ ciency of human rights in southern prisons during tion-style agrarian labor allowed the Texan prison the latter half of the twentieth century. Departing system to produce massive amounts of crops, con‐ from the top-down approach of his predecessors, tributing to the institutions’ capital success and Chase demonstrates how, in the second half of the nationwide reputation. In the 1940s, Texas prisons twentieth century, incarcerated individuals joined shifted to a model that furthered the dehumaniza‐ with Black Power and Chicano movements to peti‐ tion of plantation-style punishment yet created a tion the infringement of their constitutional rights. hierarchy of power among incarcerated folks. This Appealing to historians of political and civil rights era lead to an increase in sexual and racial vio‐ movements, labor, and incarceration, Chase offers lence. After an era of litigation throughout the an answer to the question raised by current schol‐ 1970s and 1980s in which incarcerated individuals ars—and victims—of the carceral state: how did brought their traumatic experiences to the fore‐ we get to where we are now? front of the public’s theoretical consciousness, What differentiates this book from others in southern prisons shifted to a model of militariza‐ the field is Chase’s contextualization of prison la‐ tion. Throughout the history of southern prisons, bor within the context of social and political from agrarian labor to industrial work, incarcerat‐ movements. Through numerous oral history inter‐ ed individuals throughout the South have resisted views, letters, affidavits, and depositions, Chase and rebelled against unfair working conditions by shows how fundamental the Chicano and Black striking, self-mutilation, and litigation. Power movements were in the prisoners’ rights With impressive depth Chase uncovers an era movement. This departure from employing more of prison labor that instilled varying positions of traditional legal and constitutional rights sources authority and power among incarcerated folks. better foregrounds the actions of individual and The inmate trusty system and builder tender sys‐ collective prisoners. The bottom-up framework tem allowed responsibility to be transferred from brings to light the inherent abuse of power in the the administration and employed guards to the H-Net Reviews prisoners. These racialized systems created hierar‐ states hired the director of the Osbourne Associa‐ chies of power that allowed some incarcerated tion and War Department’s chief consultant on folks to serve as guards in return for increased military prisons, Austin MacCormic, to assess their privileges including the ability to punish other pris‐ prisons and offer reform. MacCormic believed that oners. Some trustees and building tenders would by moving away from dorm-style living, sexual be allowed to carry manmade weapons and have perversion and self-mutilation would decrease. access to empty cells in which they could physical‐ During this time MacCormic wrote a legislative re‐ ly and/or sexually abuse others. Throughout the port that genuinely aimed to spur prison reform, book, sources from incarcerated folks discuss the yet as Chase argues, focused on the wrong issues. brutality of such treatment by these building ten‐ The second chapter shows that the prison ad‐ ders, often meted out for no reason at all. Any re‐ ministration used labor to control and discipline sistance to this system served as justification for incarcerated men through bodily degradation and further punishment. by withholding basic human rights. Chase consid‐ Physical and sexual violence was rampant in ers the treatment, including the lack of pay and co‐ southern prisons throughout the second half of the ercion, comparable to enslaved labor. The growth twentieth century. During the period of investiga‐ of capitalism prompted the “New, New South” tion, prisons throughout the South consistently modernity characterized by low wages, low taxes, served “as a site of power that intersected with and anti-unionism (p. 62). Here, the shift in 1948 spatial control, gender identity, sexuality and sexu‐ from the prison farm system to an agribusiness al violence, and race and racial privileges” (p. 8). plantation system drew national attention to the Through interviews and testimonies, we see the ex‐ South. Incarcerated laborers were forced to pick tent to which powerlessness, including the inabili‐ up to three hundred pounds of cotton per day, ty to file a proper complaint without consequence, drawing attention away from the inhumane con‐ slowly chipped away at the dignity and humanity ditions and punishments toward capital, produc‐ of the incarcerated. tion, and proft. We Are Not Slaves adopts a chronological ap‐ In the third chapter, Chase illuminates how the proach and is divided into three parts: “A Biogra‐ building tender and inmate trusty systems func‐ phy of Coerced Labor and State Violence” tioned as a kind of double enslavement: inmates (chapters 1-3), “From Pachuco to Write Writer” were forced to work in the fields and to surrender (chapters 4-8), and “Collapse of the Prison Planta‐ their gender identities and bodies to sexual viola‐ tion and the Carceral Phoenix” (chapters 9-10). tion. Inmate trustees used handmade weapons Chase draws examples from across the South; how‐ and access to empty cells to punish other inmates ever, he places the Texas Department of Correc‐ through physical and sexual violence. The previ‐ tions (TDC) at the forefront of analysis. ously lauded building tender system, which em‐ The first chapter outlines what were perceived powered the internal prison economy, in combina‐ as the three main issues with Texan prisons in the tion with racially divided labor and the frequent 1940s: homosexuality, self-mutilation, and spatial occurrence of violence served as a tipping point control. The Cold War instigated a fear around ho‐ for those incarcerated in Texan prisons. mosexuality as a tool of the enemy. During this Chapter 4 underscores a significant shift in re‐ time, incarcerated folks registered as homosexual sistance from prison strikes to legal battles. This were kept separate from young white men, but not chapter is centered around Fred Cruz, an incarcer‐ necessarily men of color, as the prison system ated Mexican American who became a law stu‐ aimed to protect the former. After WWII, southern dent during his time in prison in order to fight for 2 H-Net Reviews civil rights. After leading a strike of three hundred bellion. Here Chase speaks to the importance of us‐ inmates, Cruz decided to take his activism to the ing the language of slavery, allowing readers to court room through writ writing, inspiring others draw historical connections among the various to join him. The fifth chapter continues the theme abuses of Black bodies in the United States since of resistance, highlighting the multiple cases filed captivity. During the late 1970s and early 1980s, by Cruz and introducing the involvement of the tough-on-crime policies coupled with law-and-or‐ Chicano civil rights movements in Texas prisons. der agendas led to the overcrowding of prisons. In‐ In the 1970s a group of incarcerated Mexican carcerated folks relied on the language of local civ‐ Americans and African Americans worked togeth‐ il rights movements to connect with growing er with Frances Jalet, a civil rights attorney, to awareness of racism outside of prison, and lan‐ make the infringement of their constitutional guage of slavery to portray the brutality of coerced rights visible to the courts and to the public. The ev‐ labor. idence for their cases included the brutal condi‐ Chase’s penultimate chapter showcases the de‐ tions of solitary confinement, denial of religious cisive victory for the civil rights of incarcerated freedom and access to courts, censoring of the folks through the prisoner testimonies in the 1980 mail, race-based discrimination, and the building Ruiz v. Estelle case. After two decades of legal com‐ tender system. Jalet and her clients, a group of in‐ plaints and trials, the judge in this monumental terracial writ-writers known as Eight Hoe Squad, case reprimanded the TDC, noting that prisons lost numerous cases to the TDC before gaining an were “overcrowded and understaffed, that prison‐ ounce of legal justice. ers had poor medical and mental health care, and The sixth chapter introduces the influence of that prisoners were exposed to wanton abuse and the Black Power movement and the significance of frequent violence by guards and other prisoners” community among incarcerated African Ameri‐ (p. 327). Although this case set a precedent for cans. In 1973 a group of African American prison‐ prison systems across the nation, the TDC merely ers chose to resist the orders of the building ten‐ renamed the building tender system continued the ders as an act of group and individual rebellion. In same abuses of power under a new militarized so doing they “reinterpreted Black masculinity in prison system. The final chapter highlights the evo‐ the Black Power era as a figure of communitarian lution of prison gangs including the Texas Aryan protection rather than as one driven by false dis‐ Brotherhood, which was closely connected to the courses of pathologies and prone to violence” (p.

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