Slavery in US Prisons--Interview with Robert King & Terry Kupers

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." --13th Amendment, 1865.

An 18,000-acre former slave plantation in rural Louisiana, the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest prison in the U.S. Today, with African Americans composing over 75% of Angola's 5,108 prisoners, prison guards known as "free men," a forced 40-hour workweek, and four cents an hour as minimum wage, the resemblance to antebellum U.S. slavery is striking. In the early 1970s, it was even worse, as prisoners were forced to work 96-hour weeks (16 hours a day/six days a week) with two cents an hour as minimum wage. Officially considered (according to its own website) the "Bloodiest Prison in the South" at this time, violence from guards and between prisoners was endemic. Prison authorities sanctioned prisoner rape, and according to former Prison Warden Murray Henderson, the prison guards actually helped facilitate a brutal system of sexual slavery where the younger and physically weaker prisoners were bought and sold into submission. As part of the notorious "inmate trusty guard" system, responsible for killing 40 prisoners and seriously maiming 350 between 1972-75, some prisoners were given state-issued weapons and ordered to enforce this sexual slavery, as well as the prison's many other injustices. Life at Angola was living hell -- a 20th century slave plantation.


Black Panthers Robert Hillary King, Albert Woodfox, and Herman Wallace are known as the "Angola Three." Woodfox and Wallace were co-founders of a Black Panther Party chapter at Angola in the early 1970s. These Panthers saw life at Angola as modern-day slavery and fought back with non-violent hunger strikes and work strikes. Prison authorities were outraged by the BPP's organizing, and retaliated by framing these three BPP organizers for murders that they did not commit. Woodfox and Wallace were both framed for the 1972 stabbing death of white prison guard Brent Miller, and have now spent over 37 years in solitary confinement. King was framed for a 1973 murder of another prisoner, and spent 29 years in solitary confinement until he was released from in 2001 after his conviction was overturned.


This new video released by Angola 3 News is the third part of an interview conducted with Robert King and Terry Kupers in October 2009, in Oakland, CA. when King was in town for Black Panther History Month. In the first two parts King and Kupers discussed the psychological impact of imprisonment (watch here). In this new video, Robert King and Dr. Terry Kupers, argue that slavery persists today in Angola and other U.S. prisons, citing the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which legalizes slavery in prisons as "a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." As King says: "You can be legally incarcerated but morally innocent."


Dr. Terry Kupers, M.D., M.S.P. wrote the introduction to Robert King's 2008 autobiography entitled From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Robert Hillary King, and is Institute Professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California. Dr. Kupers is a psychiatrist with a background in psychoanalytic psychotherapy, forensics and social and community psychiatry. His forensic psychiatry experience includes testimony in several large class action litigations concerning jail and prison conditions, sexual abuse, and the quality of mental health services inside correctional facilities. He is a consultant to Human Rights Watch, and author of the 1999 book entitled Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It.


This video features archival photos from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Wall Street Journal editor Douglas A. Blackmon, entitled Slavery By Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• prisons
• slavery
• racism
• fascism
• Black Panther Party
• activism
• human rights

[uturniaphobic]

top secret:

instead of freeing slaves in the mid 1800s, we all became slaves.

Abraham Lincoln had created a new fiat currency to fund the North. The South created a counterfeit counter "fiat" currency. After the war Lincoln and his money were exterminated.

Central Bank became the new plantation owner of the nation and we've all been their slave ever since, paying their interest on our own money.

thanks for the vid! 5*s!

[Skeptic121]

IF prisoners are actually guilty of a violent crime then I have no problem putting them in Angola under very unpleasant conditions for many years.

I cannot support putting anyone in prison for non-violent drug crimes. I cannot support prison for "technical violations" with no moral turpitude. For example, Bernard Madoff deserves Angola or worse. Martha Stewart deserved a fine, at most.

Prosecutors who use perjured testimony or fail to disclose exculpatory evidence really belong in Angola!

[trannyvision]

It's not always slavery but part of systematic degradation... Slavery of the mind. Most men in prison belong there. They are loose cannons on the streets. Their parents should have freed their minds. They don't have to work if they have support outside.

[uturniaphobic]

@Vikkoman Lincoln went to the great bankers asking for war funding. they said "sure at 36% interest". So rather than do that he created his own money (as it should be) and called it the "Greenback". This infuriated the banking cartel. so they let the war end and then ended Lincoln and his money. look into it.

[Vikkoman]

@He101A They know it damn well. They think tje 13th amendment's clause is an unfortunate loophole

[Vikkoman]

@uturniaphobic Huh?

That sounds Loughner-ish

[gittahfiend]

If you are a criminal it matters not WHAT color you are .If you're guilty,you're guilty

[phillyboundbks]

wow

[Skeptic121]

@He101A Drugs fund many different kinds of bad people, including the CIA and Bill Clinton. Google Mena + Dan Lassiter.  Alcohol and tobacco arguably fund bad people who sell them, but not violent bad people. Why not? Because alcohol and tobacco are legal, buyers and sellers can use the courts to settle disputes instead of using AK47s. Libertarians believe the drug war does more harm than good. Alcohol ruins millions of lives but alcohol prohibition ruined our society so we repealed it.

[uturniaphobic]

yeah a custom design all right!

it's more like covert slavery because most the people I talk with have no clue.

they use euphemisms like "income tax" which is actually a direct tax on labor. Nothing capitalistic about it, it is social robbery. For we surrender this money before we can "capitalize" on it. literally a slave tax

[MrMadechina]

its a designer slavery

[mcthorogood]

This unjust system is supported by judicial corruption, vis-a-vis the "Kids for Cash Scandal" in Wikipedia.