Announcing the publication of Dr. Robert Chase’s article “Slaves of the State’ Revolt: Southern Prison Labor and a Prison-Made Civil Rights Movement” in Robert Zieger’s collected anthology, Life and Labor in the New, New South (University Press of Florida 2012).
Dr. Chase, the new public historian at 
Avery, argues that a prison-made civil rights movement developed across the American South by building on the lessons of George Jackson’s murder in California and the Attica 1971 prison uprising. This article demonstrates how inmates confronted a southern prison modernization narrative with the imagery of slavery and the prisoner as slave. By constructing a prison-made civil rights movement across racial lines behind bars, this inter-racial inmate coalition defied the legal, social, and political definition of prisoners as civilly dead and “slaves of the state.”
Congratulations Robert! I look forward to reading your article as well as those of your colleagues.
Pre-order it now on Amazon
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