Black Prisoners and Their World: Alabama, 1865-1900

by Mary Ellen Curtin

In the late nineteenth century, prisoners in Alabama, the vast majority of them African Americans, were forced to work as coal miners under the most horrendous conditions imaginable. Black Prisoners and Their World draws on a variety of sources, including the reports and correspondence of prison inspectors and letters from prisoners and their families, to explore the history of the African American men and women whose labor made Alabama's prison system...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0813919843
• ISBN13: 9780813919843
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Length: 261 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.1" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Superb

Mary Ellen Curtin's Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865-1900 delivers precisely the history its title promises. And more: If you fear a too-narrow focus, you needn't be overly concerned. Yes, the book in the main concentrates on post-emancipation, pre-fin-de-siècle Alabama, but it also gives the reader a substantial overview of the period 1901-1928 (1928 being the year Alabama finally took its state and county prisoners out of the coal mines/death camps). If you are at all interested in the sacrifices (in every sense of the word) of black Americans after the Civil War--and especially those of black American prisoners--I unreservedly recommend this book to you. It's everything a work of history should be: Comprehensive within its stated purview; highly erudite; deeply insightful; scrupulously fair; mindful of the limits of the available evidence; and perhaps most important, well written and readily digested. For those who, like me, come to it because they read Douglas Blackmon's Slavery by Another Name--which is essential reading in its own right--it's eye-opening as well. (I should not fail to note also that the epilogue, which discusses the state of the prison industrial complex as of 2000, is hugely informative--not to mention, damningly critical.)