America Is the Prison: Arts and Politics in Prison in the 1970s

4. WE TOOK THE WEIGHT: Incarcerated Writers and Artists in the Black Arts Movement

chApter four we took the weight IncArcerAted wrIters And ArtIsts In the BlAck Arts movement During the 1970s prison rehabilitative efforts seemed to narrow to the point where trying to scare people straight was the most visible prison program in the country. At the same time, alternative visions of prison life found numerous venues for expression and distribution.The work of prison writers appeared in small distribution publications like the Fortune Society’s Fortune News and Joseph Bruchac’s Greenfield Review. Some found their work picked up by specialty houses like Dudley Randall’s Broadside Press, major university presses, and even some trade publishers. Perhaps the greatest incubators and benefactors of prison culture during the 1970s, however, were the movements for cultural nationalism among African Americans and Latinos.To public policyofficials, a program would be deemed useful if it reduced recidivism . To people who championed rehabilitation, resources and measurable outcomes could lead to the creation of education and therapeutic programs. To those who championed deterrence, programs like Scared Straight! that highlighted the fearsome qualities of prison life won the day. For prisoners who highlighted the racist underpinnings and impact of the criminal justice system, however, any program originating from state departments of correction or other state agencies was suspect. As notions of liberation and black and brown cultural nationalism achieved increasing currency, African American and Latino prisoners and their advocates turned away from deterrence or rehabilitation. Instead, liberation became the new touchstone for relevancy and the Black Arts movement the ascendant force in the culture of American prisons. In particular, the cultural life of American prisons became intertwined with the Black Arts and Black Power movements in shared 100 we took the weIght ideological goals, aesthetic principles, and institutional arrangements throughout the 1970s. By the end of the decade, the two movements would symbolicallyembrace the plight of incarcerated African Americans as symptomatic of the broader black experience in the United States.Inaddition,majortheoreticiansandartistsfromthemovements would spend time behind bars, either while facing criminal charges or as scholars and teachers in prison arts and education programs. The radicalization of American prisoners—and especially African American and Latino prisoners—led many to consider all inmates of color to be “political prisoners.” The criminal justice system unfairly targeted African Americans, Native Americans, and Latinos and then denied them access to a fair trial. Many African American prisoners turned to cultural nationalism by changing their names, adopting African anticolonial revolutionary names for their organizations, and connecting their freedom to the broader movement for black liberation. Finally, the literary, visual, and performing arts were explicitly politicized by the Black Power movement inside and outside prison walls just as prison authorities, universities, and government and nongovernment funding agencies began experimenting with ambitious arts and education programs in major U.S. correctional facilities. Artists from the Black Arts movement took an active role in fostering the artistic and literary ambitions of incarcerated people while including the plight of prisoners as subject matter in their work. Faith Ringgold painted a mural and worked with women prisoners at New York’s Rikers Island. Benny Andrews curated a show of prisoner artwork at the Studio Museum in Harlem. The poet Gwendolyn Brooks mentored Etheridge Knight when he was still writing from a prison cell. Similarly, arts organizations provided funding and vision for numerous prison projects. Throughout the country, an impressive array of artists and writers ran workshops, published chapbooks at their own expense, taught music classes, and did the daily work of mentoring incarcerated artists. Much of this legacy has been obscured or forgotten. The links between incarcerated people and the Black Arts movement were forged by individual and institutional commitments inside and outside of correctional facilities. What impact did the institutional context have we took the weIght 101 on this key arts movement? What was the significance of the image and idea of “the prisoner” to the Black Arts movement? What did incarcerated writers contribute to the Black Arts movement? By remembering the institutions, images, and inmates that influenced the movement, we gain new insight into the politics and aesthetics of the era. While those who created these programs hoped that access to the arts and education would help reform convicts, the incarcerated artists themselves believed that they were artists in service to a revolution . Incarcerated peoplewere central to the revolutionaryaims of the Black Arts movement both in the works they wrote and in the symbol they provided...