Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the Southern Blues Violences

One of the most frequently quoted descriptions of the blues--“an autobiographical chronicle of personal catastrophe expressed lyrically”--was penned by Ralph Ellison in a 1945 review essay of Richard Wright’s autobiography, Black Boy. This chapter uses Ellison’s formulation as an opening through which to explore the way in which three distinct but related modes of southern violence play significant roles in the major works of both authors. Disciplinary violence, including lynching, vagrancy laws, and prison farms, is white-on-black violence that aims to terrorize, immobilize, and punish. Retributive violence is black-on-white violence that resists or strikes back at disciplinary violence. Intimate violence is black-on-black violence driven by jealousy, hatred, and other strong passions. All three forms of violence show up in the blues tradition—and in Black Boy, where they help Wright craft a portrait of a blues-surcharged young Mississippian who, although bereft of the tools and training needed to express those blues musically, will ultimately find in literature, where words can be “weapons,” the outlet he so desperately needs. In Invisible Man and other texts, by contrast, Ellison employs the southern violences in ways that often heighten the comic element within blues’ tragicomic palette of emotions.

Challenges of Prison Farm Management in Nigeria

This paper focuses on challenges of prison farm management in Nigeria. The empirical results are based on a qualitative and quantitative survey of 54 inmates and 17 prison officers in Ibite-Olo and Ozalla prison farms in Enugu and Edo States of Nigeria respectively. The findings show that the prison farms under study had collaboration with partner agencies such as the federal ministry of agriculture (57.9%), agricultural extension agents (47.4%), agricultural research institutes (42.1%) and NGOs (36.8%), among others. The necessary support from partner agencies covered the following: financial aid (78.9%) and sales/maintenance of farm machinery and implements (68.4%). Furthermore, inmates and prison officers stated the challenges hindering effective running of prison farms’ agricultural activities, including: inadequate funding, lack of physical infrastructure, inadequate farm equipment and poor storage facilities. The findings support the conclusion that the Nigerian Prison Service should make an upward review in its budgetary allocation to prison farms to enhance service delivery and inmate reformation, alongside provision of adequate infrastructure, equipment and farm inputs.

Prison Farm Inmates’ Reformation and Rehabilitation

The main objective of this study was to assess farm management activities of prison farms in Nigeria. The study adopted a survey design. Most implemented programs in prison farms included crop production. Inmates preferred rice farming because it is a staple food with a readily available market to sell and make profit. There were no provisions made by the management of the prison farms visited to reach out to prisoners upon release. Agricultural activities that could increase inmates’ chances of gainful employment when released and channel energy and thoughts towards positive things motivated them to effectively participate in farm operations. To enhance inmates’ skills acquisition in agricultural vocations, more efforts should be made by the management of Nigerian prisons service to sustain fully implemented agricultural programs while attempts are made to fully implement other agricultural programs, especially in the areas of animal husbandry.

Cultural Resilience as Resistance

The chapter reveals how cultural connections to Mexico and a shared Mexican heritage allowed Mexican American prisoners survive the isolation and quotidian colonization of Mexican people within the confines of Southwestern prison farms during the Great Depression. The chapter explores how Mexican American prisoners on the U.S. side of the border relied on cultural persistence and survivals to reshape Texas prison farms into spaces of cultural continuity. By taking readers inside the confines of Texas’s only all-Mexican prison, the Blue Ridge State Farm, known as “Little Mexico,” the chapter reveals how language, song, sport, food, religious practices, and a Spanish-language prison newspaper sustained a “hidden script” and practices of everyday resistance that fashioned what the chapter calls a “colonia within the carceral state.”

The Importance of Prison Farms: Evidence from Malawi’s Prisons

While Malawi’s per capita cereal production may be higher than her per capita cereal consumption, Malawi is a net cereal importer and thus food insecure. The food situation is much worse in Malawi’s prisons because inmates generally eat one meal per day.The general objective of this study was to determine the importance of farms in Malawi’s prisons by comparing food insecurity in prisons with farms to that in prisons without farms. Using structured questionnaires in face to face interviews, the study collected data from 1000 prisoners and 30 officers-in-charge from all prisons in the country. The data was analysed using Stata 12 and employed the probit and the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) models as an analytical tools.Results from the analysis showed that practically all prisoners in Malawi’s prisons were food insecure. There was a higher perception of food insecurity in prisons without farms than there was in prisons with farms. Conditions of severe food insecurity were experienced more in non-farmed prisons than in farmed prisons, and more prisoners in non-farmed prisons depended on food brought to them from their homes. Food insecurity was more prevalent in prisons without farms than in prisons with farms.

War's End: How did the war affect Aborigines and Islanders?

In the 20 years before the Second World War the frontier war dragged to a close in remote parts of north Australia with the 1926 Daly River massacre and the 1928 Coniston massacre. There was a rapid decline in the Aboriginal population, giving rise to the idea of the ‘dying race’ which had found policy expression in the State ‘Protection’ Acts. Aboriginal and Islander labour was exploited under scandalous rates of pay and conditions in the struggling north Australian beef industry and the pearling industry. In south east Australia, Aborigines endured repressive white control on government reserves and mission stations described by some historians as being little better than prison farms. A largely ineffectual Aboriginal political movement with a myriad of organisations, none of which had a pan-Aboriginal identity, struggled to make headway against white prejudice. Finally, in 1939, John McEwen's ‘assimilation policy’ was introduced and, though doomed to failure, it at least recognised that Aborigines had a place in Australia in the long term.

“The Man on the Spot”: Independence of the Australian Governor, 1788-1850

Australians recognize distance and isolation as a mold which shaped their history. Geoffrey Blainey observes this in his brilliantly provocative book, The Tyranny of Distance, and points out the consequences of Australia's geographic situation. Australia is at least 12,000 miles from England, and her continental perimeter is another 12,000 miles. Because of slow and uncertain communications between Australia and Whitehall from 1788 to 1850, the governor was really “the man on the spot”; he had often to act more independently than his instructions intended, and at times he defied both Whitehall and the colonists, sometimes at the same time. Although his link with the Colonial Office was direct, the secretaries of state to whom he was responsible changed frequently; yet much of our information comes from the dispatches between these officials.The colony of New South Wales comprised nearly all of eastern continental Australia until 1850. It was founded as a penal colony in 1788. The commission of the first governor, Arthur Phillip, gave him almost complete autocratic powers over the colony, prompting a military attaché to observe: “I never heard of any one single person having so great power vested in him as the Governor.” This commission stood, with some slight exceptions, for more than thirty years.Because of these extraordinary powers, the early governors were called autocrats. Although the British government decided how many convicts were to be sent and the colonial secretaries in London issued frequent instructions, the distance and slow mails — three to six-month voyages en route each way — placed the governor in complete control of the colony's expansion. Thus, the disposal of land, labor, and capital depended on each governor's individual discretion. After 1824, when George Arthur became lieutenant governor, Tasmania became independent from New South Wales. Eventually, these two autocratically ruled prison farms became prosperous self-governing colonies after 1850. Meanwhile, Western Australia and South Australia were founded sans convicts in 1829 and 1836, respectively. This paper will deal first with New South Wales, and more briefly with Tasmania, Western Australia, and South Australia.