Copyright by Ethan Van Blue 2004 The Dissertation Committee for Ethan Van Blue certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Hard Time in the New Deal: Racial Formation and The Cultures of Punishment in Texas and California in the 1930s Committee: ______________________________ Neil Foley, Supervisor ______________________________ William E. Forbath ______________________________ David M. Oshinsky ______________________________ James Sidbury ______________________________ Robert Olwell ______________________________ Gunther Peck Hard Time in the New Deal: Racial Formation and The Cultures of Punishment in Texas and California in the 1930s by Ethan Van Blue, B.A.; M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin August 2004 Acknowledgements This dissertation was made possible through the generosity of many friends, family members, archivists, and academic advisors, to whom I am deeply grateful. I was doubly fortunate in that in the process of writing the dissertation, many of these people came to serve double duty; friends became family, family became academic advisors, archivists and advisors became friends, and my family, with skill and grace, played each of these roles. I thank them all. As a student at University of Texas at Austin, I benefited from a wonderful cohort of peers. I learned as much from conversations with friends as I did in any coursework, and I would particularly like to thank Luis Alvarez, Manuel Calahan, Ryan Carey, Steve Galpern, Rebecca Montes-Donovan, Sandra Frink, Stephen Berry, Patrick Lowery-Timmons, Jason Lowery-Timmons, Alan Gómez, and John Troutman for their good humor, sound criticism, and camaraderie in Austin and beyond. In particular, colleagues in the Advanced Seminars in Chicano Research and Borderlands Studies offered a model of politically engaged scholarship, peer mentoring, and theorization and praxis of intellectual work as one site of struggle among others. At the University of Texas, I was fortunate to receive academic and financial support in my graduate career from the Texas State Historical Association, where I learned many of the details of academic publishing as well as good scholarship. More recently, I have benefited from a Predoctoral Resident Research Fellowship from the iv Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies at the University of Virginia. Like at the University of Texas, I have drawn inspiration from members of the Woodson community. Reginald Butler, Scot French, Wende Marshall, Hanan Sabea, and Corey D. B. Walker all provided a warm and engaging environment for conversation, coffee, and research. Even more than the time and space to write I found at the Woodson, I owe a deep debt of gratitude to the other Woodson Pre- and Postdoctoral Fellows. Not only are Sandy Alexandre, Davarian L. Baldwin, Mieka Brand, Candice M. Lowe, Jesse Weaver Shipley, and Tyrone R. Simpson II fine scholars and critics, but also wonderful friends and teachers. I must single out Candice Lowe and Tyrone Simpson for two years of wonderful camaraderie. They have become advisors and confidants, whose insight, humor and a thousand other gifts have made this a better project and me a better scholar. Mari Ines Arroyo-Woodsome was immensely helpful at the Woodson and beyond, and Susan Dempsey helped me through more than one computing crisis. I also benefited from conversation, feedback, and the advice of numerous scholars at the University of Virginia. Eric Lott, Grace Hale, Edward L. Ayers, Tico Braun, George Mentore, Ira Bashkow, Howard Singerman, and Allan Megill offered support and criticism. In addition, Scott Saul had sage advice on everything from chapter organization to curry recipes, and always had a song of good cheer. Clare Terni’s advice and conversation were as nourishing as the many dinners she hosted. Risa Goluboff and Kirt van Daake each commented on multiple chapters. I owe them my thanks, look forward to returning the favor. Nathan Sanford provided timely research help. Other friends from the University of Virginia, though from years v before – including Samuel J. K. Roberts, Adrian Davis, C. J. Higley, Townsend Middleton, Robbie Collins, and Noah Flaxenburg – provided sound advice throughout and beyond the writing process. Among the many archivists and librarians I have met in California, Texas, Maryland, and Washington, D. C., Lucy Barber and Jeff Crawford at the California State Archives were among the very best. Both were knowledgeable, friendly, and insightful. Laura Saegert at the Texas State Archives has been immensely helpful through the years that I have researched Texas prisons. No dissertation can be written without sound advice, mentoring, and critique. Neil Foley, Gunther Peck, Bob Olwell, David Oshinsky, William Forbath, and James Sidbury provided important feedback through vital stages of the research, writing, and evaluation process. Asale Angel-Ajani, David Montejano, Kevin Kenny, Richard Flores, Penny von Eschen, Harry Cleaver, Kathleen Stewart, James Brow and Polly Strong also greatly influenced this project through years of coursework and support. Rose Braz provided political inspiration through her work with Critical Resistance, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore remains an inspiration for political analysis and scholarship. My family has earned my largest debt, for their love and humor throughout a long process. Alice and Mike Nadler have been unstinting in their pride and support of my research. Griff and Mary Garwood have also been wonderful parents, providing welcoming and warm respite from research at their home. My brother, Adam Blue, and my sister, Alisa Garni, are inspirations for the range of their intellectual and creative works: aesthetic, political, and academic in equal measures. My mother, Patricia Blue vi Garni, and my Step-Father, Don Garni, have also been unflagging in their support from beyond memory, and I can only hope my gratitude suggests a thankfulness for which words do meager justice. Though my father, Donald Blue, did not see this project to its completion, his sensibilities and sense of social justice are evident on each page. But for the love, affection, and critical and editorial skills of my wife and best friend, Shae Garwood, this dissertation could hardly have been written. It is to her that I dedicate this work, and for whom I am grateful with all of my being, each and every day. vii Hard Time in the New Deal: Racial Formation and The Cultures of Punishment in Texas and California in the 1930s Publication No. ________ Ethan Van Blue, Ph.D. University of Texas at Austin, 2004 Supervisor: Neil Foley “Hard Time in the New Deal” bridges historiographies in criminal justice studies, working class history, and cultural histories of the Depression and New Deal to paint a detailed picture of life behind bars in the earliest years of the American welfare state. It analyzes the ways in which punishment structured racial and social hierarchies in a location where members of the multiracial working class worked, lived, fought, played, and sometimes protested in a period of massive political economic crisis. It argues that Depression-era prisons – as a last resort of state control – produced social inequality even within the egalitarian vision that the New Deal era promised. Because Texas and California State Prisons incarcerated poor black, white, Mexican, and Asian viii and Native American inmates, they provide key sites to examine the practices of white supremacy and racial subordination among multiracial populations; processes through which racial antagonism generally, if incompletely, eclipsed class identities. Not only were prisoners divided against each other, but all criminals were situated against an image of white male citizenry ascendant in the New Deal years. “Hard Time in the New Deal” explores the complex social and cultural worlds of punishment through the interwoven categories of race, class, gender, sexuality, and nation. It illuminates the multifaceted forms of social conflict animating every level of punishment to demonstrate how the state attempted to reproduce, and thus guarantee, social hierarchies in the midst of economic crisis. Drawing on a range of state- and prisoner-authored sources, “Hard Time in the New Deal” examines prison labor laws, sports, radio programming, as well as the organization of space, the distribution of labor, and the instrumentality of violence – to gain insight into the experience of prison as a contested site of social control. Despite government officials’ seemingly limitless ability to shape life behind bars, Texas and California prisons remained beyond firm control through the Depression years. The social contradictions prisons attempted to contain – but continued to produce – would persist and expand through the rest of the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. ix Contents Acknowledgements: iv Introduction: Hard Time in the New Deal: Racial Formation and the 1 Cultures of Punishment in Texas and California in the 1930s Chapter 1: Of Bodies and Borders: Prisons as Engines of Identity 44 Formation in Texas and California Chapter 2: Criminals, Citizens, and Immigrants: The Regulation of 99 Prison Labor and White Male Working Class Formation Chapter 3: Race, Gender, and Discipline in Texas and California 152 Prison Labor Systems Chapter 4: Building Tenders, Con Bosses,