Doing Time in the Depression: Everyday Life in Texas and California Prisons

Acknowledgments

| vii Acknowledgments From Austin to Sacramento and Charlottesville to Perth, I’ve accumulated many debts over the course of writing this book. Advisors, colleagues , friends, students, and family all gave generously of their time and advice, and even if I haven’t been shrewd enough to accept it all, I am grateful . I am more grateful still for the community the discussions helped make: advisors became friends; students taught me much; family became advisors; colleagues became family. Many thanks to you all. The University of Texas provided a warm—sweltering, even—place for graduate study. Many of the conversations I had there, in seminars and libraries, coffee shops and bars, developed the ideas that come through in the pages that follow. Neil Foley, Gunther Peck, and Robert Olwell proved a formidable trio of supervisors, whose comments expanded my thought while tightening my analysis. David Montejano, Carolyn Eastman, Kevin Kenny, Willy Forbath, David Oshinksy, James Sidbury, Harry Cleaver, Luis Alvarez, Manuel Callahan, Patrick Timmons, Alan Eladio Gómez, Ryan Carey, Steven Galpern, John Troutman, Rebecca Montes, Stephen Berrey, Norwood Andrews, and Kenneth Aslakson deserve warm thanks. The Advanced Seminar for Borderlands Research provided a model of collaborative learning and engaged research that I’ve carried with me ever since. Reginald Butler, Tico Braun, Edward Ayers, and George Mentore inspired me as an undergraduate, but this inspiration paled in comparison to the scholarly challenges they would later provide. A predoctoral research fellowship at the University of Virginia’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African and African American Studies gave intellectual companionship and vital financial support: deep thanks to Reginald Butler, Scot French, Corey Walker, Deborah McDowell, Scott Saul, Wende Marshall, Hanan Sabea, Davarian Baldwin, Cheryl Hicks, Grace Hale, Eric Lott, Sandy Alexandre, Mieka Brand, and most especially to Tyrone Simpson, Jesse Shipley, and Candice Lowe. viii | Acknowledgments Colleagues at the University of Western Australia have also been generous in their support for this disoriented and sunburned new arrival. Charlie Fox, Mark Edele, Rob Stuart, Susie Protschky, Richard Bosworth, Giuseppe Finaldi, Andrea Gaynor, David Barrie, Sue Broomhall, Jenny Gregory, Esta Ungar, Philippa Maddern, Norman Etherington, Jeremy Martens, Blaze Kwaymullina, David Savat, Alistair Paterson, Michael Levine, Philip Mead, Gareth Griffiths, Shalmalee Palekar, Brenda Walker, Bill Taylor, and Clarissa Ball enriched the book in many ways. Others further afield in Perth, the antipodes, and elsewhere, helped immeasurably. Many thanks to Andrew Webster, Theodore Hamm, Carolyn Strange, Frances Clarke, Clare Corbould , Janaka Biyanwila, Karen Soldatic, Mary Bosworth, Arnoldo de León, and Paul Tallion. Rhys Isaac’s pointed and wry feedback was the kind that only he could provide. Special thanks to Shane White and Richard Bosworth, whose detailed comments on the full manuscript sharpened the analysis. Brooke Lamperd and George Robertson provided wonderful research assistance . So did Kevin Shupe. I’m also grateful to the fellow travelers I’ve met at conferences and elsewhere . Thanks to Ruthie Gilmore, Rose Braz, Christian Parenti, Eileen Boris, Volker Janssen, Samuel Roberts, and to Stephen R. Mahoney for an early push in the right direction. Laura Saegert and John Anderson were tremendous guides to the Texas State Archives. Lucy Barber and Jeff Crawford were of special help at the California State Archives, and Marin County Free Librarians Laurie Thompson and Carol Uhrmacher continue to earn my gratitude. A University of Western Australia Research Grant, and an American Historical Association Littleton–Griswold Research Grant enabled time in those archives. Eric Zinner, Ciara McLaughlin, and the readers at NYU Press also offered sage advice that helped make the book a reality, and an Australian Academy of the Humanities publication subsidy made the book better. Alex Lichtenstein gave incisive comments on one of the first conference papers I ever gave, and his detailed notes on this manuscript were equally astute. Since my arrival in Australia, the West Australian Deaths in Custody Watch Committee has been a source of motivation and inspiration. It has been a privilege to join in their struggle. Untold billions of dollars come into Western Australia from the mining boom, while Aboriginal Australians, from whose lands the minerals come, die in state custody in shocking numbers . The Deaths in Custody Committee’s work has enriched my own, and serves as a reminder that William Faulkner’s insight into America’s past also holds true for Australia’s: the past isn’t over; it isn’t even past. Acknowledgments | ix But my deepest thanks go to my family...