One of the many ruses racism achieves is the virtual erasure of historical contributions by people of color. Here we have a penal system that was racist in many respects—discriminatory arrests and sentences, conditions of work, modes of punishment—together with the racist erasure of the significant contributions made by black convicts as a result of racist coercion. Just as it is difficult to imagine how much is owed to convicts relegated to penal servitude during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, we find it difficult today to feel a connection with the prisoners who produce a rising
...more
