CULTIVATE HISTORY & AWARENESS
photo used with permission by Bruce Jackson
Texas Agriculture and the For-Profit Prison Industry Part II by Charlotte Lucke Bruce Jackson’s collection of photographs
plant, plastic sign shop, and an agricultural
are haunting reminders of the way the
operation where prisoners have grown
past reaches into the present, the present
crops and raised livestock since 1883. In a
into the past. Providing a glimpse into
report submitted to the court in 1979, a
Texas prison farms from 1964 until 1979,
corrections expert observed that the
the photos reveal convicts tilling fields and
Texas Department of Corrections was
picking crops as guards on horseback
“probably the best example of slavery
watch over them with loaded rifles. The
remaining in the country.” Jackson’s
1974 case, Ruiz vs. Estelle, widens the
photographs support this testimonial,
glimpse into Texas prisons and their labor
visually testifying to conditions uncannily
operations. In the 1974 lawsuit, inmates
reminiscent of slave plantations.
charged the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC) with cruel and unusual
Jackson photographed Texas prison
punishment at the Wynne Unit in
farms in an era marked by a boom in
Huntsville, Texas which houses a mattress
prison populations as the carceral state
factory, coffee plant, records conversion
tackled the spectres of crime and drugs.
32 | Summer 2021 | Cultivate SA
