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| 135 5 Thirty Minutes behind the Walls Prison Radio and the Popular Culture of Punishment At 10:30 p.m., on March 23, 1938, four chimes sounded on Fort Worth Station WBAP, and listeners heard words that in other circumstances would have struck them with terror: “We now take you to the grounds of the Texas State Prison.” But instead of the sound of a gavel strike or the word “guilty” from a jury foreman, there was pleasant music. No judge spoke to declare a sentence; rather, listeners heard a radio broadcaster’s smooth intonation , with music playing softly in the background. Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen. . . . This evening through the facilities [of] WBAP, Texas prisoners make their air-debut in a series of completely original weekly broadcasts authorized by the Texas Prison Board expressly to acquaint Texas with the excellent talent behind these walls, as well as with the modernized program of rehabilitation recently adopted by the Administration. It will be the purpose of these programs to vividly illustrate what is being done by the Prison Board and the Management to adequately prepare the inmates to reestablish themselves in organized society after their release. It is the sincere wish of the Board, the Management , WBAP, and the prisoners that you find these programs entertaining as well as enlightening.1 Texas governor James Allred strode to the microphone after the professional radio announcer. He told listeners far and wide that their exciting new radio program, Thirty Minutes behind the Walls, would allow prisoners to speak directly to the listening public on the still-new medium of radio. This, he made clear, was a bold experiment in penology. But the governor was less than wholly forthright, because Thirty Minutes was also a bold experiment in public relations on behalf of a prison system beset by scandal. Nor did 136 | Thirty Minutes behind the Walls the governor mention the hope that Thirty Minutes might offset the public’s troublingly persistent fascination with crime and gangsters.2 Through their conjoined efforts, a commercial radio station and the Texas State Prison broadcast new penological messages over the airwaves, along with music and comedy, to instruct listeners in the Jim Crow order of Texas law.3 Their message, broadcast from 1938 through the war years and carried by WBAP’s 50,000-watt clear channel broadcast, spread far. Two years into the broadcast , prison officials estimated that some five million listeners tuned in each week, and some estimates would range as high as seven million. A year later, more than 221,000 fans from forty-two states in the United States and abroad signed letters supporting the program that “boys and girls in white” performed each Wednesday.4 At its inception, Thirty Minutes behind the Walls was unique in featuring convicted felons as entertainers, though other prison systems, including California ’s, soon followed suit. Thirty Minutes behind the Walls, like San Quentin ’s San Quentin on the Air, followed a classic variety show format. A typical program might include a warden’s description of a new rehabilitative plan, an interview with a prisoner, perhaps a poem or a comedy sketch, and a letter written from a fan. But the majority of the show was dedicated to music— the music of the Texas working class. The eight-odd songs played each week ranged from gospel and spirituals to blues and hot jazz, from western swing and country to cancíon-corridos and rumba. The music was the hook. People listened to a staid Texas Prison Board member’s speech because of the music and the prisoner interviews that surrounded it. And what listeners heard may have been different than what broadcasters intended. Radio broadcasts emerged as a new element of American penal discipline in the late Depression. As inmate labor was increasingly circumscribed by New Deal–era labor laws, such as the Hawes-Cooper Act (1929) and the Ashurst-Sumners Act (1934), prison radio meshed with other popular cultural forms, including baseball leagues, rodeos, literary magazines, and newspapers, to retrain prisoners in recreational activities appropriate to the welfare state and a Keynesian economy. At the same time, these popular cultural events instructed the free world audience in the risks of breaking the law. The programs were as much for audiences outside the prison as they were for inmates on the inside. The citizens that these broadcasts aimed to create, steeped in the liberal ideologies of consumption, leisure, and athleticism, were at every step consistent with broad...

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