STOR
The Prison Birth of Black Power
Roberta Ann Johnson
Journal ofBlack Studies,
Volume 5, Issue 4 (Jun., 1975), 395-414 .
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THE PRISON BIRTH OF
BLACK POWER
ROBERTA ANN JOHNSON
Department of Political Science
University of Missouri, Kansas City
If ever America undergoes great revolutions, they will be brought
about by the presence of the black race on the soil of the United
States; that is to say, they will owe their origin, not to the equality, but to the inequality ofcondition .
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America,
Vol. II, Bk. III, ch. 21.
Over 200,000 Americans spent today in prison (Roberts,
1971 : 1). They are mostly under thirty and from large cities .
Over one-half have less than eight years of schooling;
two-thirds are semi- or unskilled laborers. More than one-half
of all prison inmates are Black.'
Prisoners, measured by the usual social science standards,
are the unskilled, unsuccessful, anti-social, apolitical. Why,
then, are so many in an atmosphere of material deprivation,
willing to trade such valuables as a pack of cigarettes to rent a
copy of The Autobiography of Malcolm X or Soledad
Brother (Roberts, 1971 : 58 ; Socialist Revolution, 1972).
What has politicized them?
JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES, Vol. 5 No . 4, June 1975
©1975 Sage Publications, Inc.
(395]
(3961 JOURNAL OF B LACK STUDI ES / JUNE 1975
This paper is an attempt to explain the increase in Black
political awareness in prisons . My thesis is two-fold: first, to
demonstrate the basic similarity between ghetto and prison ;
second, following from this, to argue that Black political
awareness emerges in prisons for the same reasons it emerges
in the ghetto .
The prison is similar to the ghetto in that in both places
those outside have the power to control and to define those
inside. The appeal of Black separatists is to offer to those
inside the alternative of determining their own fate and
defining their own values . In addition, the prison is similar to
the ghetto because in both places there is psychological
anomie and economic hustle . For this, the Black separatist
offers the promise of a community.
Like Clark (1965 : 26), 1 will treat all ghettos as basically
alike because "In most important ways-social and economic
structure, community culture, equality of education and the
like-all urban ghettos in America are similar ."' And I will
treat all prisons as basically alike. As Shaw (1946 : 9)
confides, "I knew Prince Peter Kropotkin, who, after
personal experience of the most villainous convict prisons in
Siberia and the best model prisons in France said that they
were both so bad that the difference was not worth talking
about."
THE PRISON
In the prison, where all legitimate power is in the hands of
the custodians, it is obvious that authority and control come
from outside . Jackson (1972 : 92) calls it "a frightening,
petrifying diffusion of violence and intimidation . . . . How
else could a small group of armed men be expected to hold
and rule another much larger group ." Yet prisons do not only
control, they also give a new identity to those who are
prisoners.
Constantly being watched, uniformed, and having his head
shaved, the prisoner has exchanged his name for a number .
Johnson / BLACK POWER [ 397]
The system strikes at the prisoner's conception of his own
personal adequacy (Sykes and Messinger, 1960: 14). His ego
is "thoroughly squashed and trampled" (Bennett, 1950: 3),
and, as one inmate in Indiana State Prison put it (Massachusetts Council on Crime and Correction, 1971), "all men
surrender to the despair of prison routine ." Thus, "The
present system is ingeniously calculated, . . . to break a man's
spirit" (Badillo and Haynes, 1972 : foreword) .
What is always the same about prisons, therefore, is what
they make of their prisoners . As Johnny Cash (n.d.) describes
it, "The culture of a thousand years is shattered with the
clanging of the cell door behind you . . . . all you have with
you in the cell is your bare animal instincts ." Even Kansas
Judge E. Newton Vickers (while inspecting the Nevada State
Prison) admitted (Time, 1971 : 50), "1 felt like an animal in a
cage" and he urged Nevada to "send two bulldozers out there
to tear the damn thing to the ground."
The prisoner feels like a caged animal because he is treated
like one (Massachusetts Council, 1971 ; also see Attica
Defense Committee). A guard describing the McAlester riot
of July 30, 1971, said, "The animals have taken over the
zoo,"3 and an inmate at Walpole State Prison (Massachusetts
Council, 1971) reacts to the message-"If I am what I am
being treated as then I should be shot."
It is little wonder that Jimmy Hoffa (Raskin, 1972: 54)
who served in the Federal Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, called correctional institutions "hell holes," describing
the "bestiality of the existing penal system" for Senate and
House Committee hearings.' Ralph Ginzburg (1972 : 39),
who assumed the identity of 38124-134 in the minimum
security prison camp at Allenwood, describes the horror of
"complete psychic castration ." "Every last vestige of a man's
individuality and independence," he says, "is stripped from
him."
Not surprisingly, a recurring demand from prisoners is for
dignity . "The rebel at Attica who shouted : `We want to be
human beings, we will be treated as human beings,' spoke for
(3981 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES /JUNE 1975
thousands of inmates in dozens of prisons" (Roberts, 1971 :
58). 5
THE GHETTO
Although in the United States the term ghetto has been
used to refer to black sections in metropolitan areas, the term
and the concept "ghetto," as we know it, was born in the
canon of the Third Lateran Council of 1179 which "forbade
Jews and Christians to dwell together ."' The canon rule was
sporadically enforced until 1516 when the Venetian Republic
ordered the segregation of the Jews into special quarters
which were formerly known as Ghetto Nuovo or New
Foundry. A little later Ghetto Vechio (Old Foundry) was
added to the Jewish district and the term ghetto spread
through all of Italy as the official name for Jewish quarters .
In America, the Black ghettos have multiplied in size and
population in the last decades.' Presently, New York, Los
Angeles, Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, St. Louis, New
Orleans, and Chicago contain 16 areas with populations of
15,000 to 100,000 that are over 94% Black (Banfield, 1970:
12). By 1940, according to Robert Weaver, there were 4
general ghetto patterns .' They were all patterns of segregation.
Surrounded by what Clark (1965 : 11) calls "the invisible
wall," each of the segregated areas depends on the outside.
Harlem, for example, "symbol of Negro ghettos everywhere,"
does not produce goods and cannot support its people, most
of whom leave it each day for their jobs (Clark, 1965 :
25-41) . Most of Harlem's businesses are small and even the
more substantial ones are marginal (see Ofari, 1970 : ch . 3 for
information on other ghettos). Twenty-seven percent of
those listed in the yellow pages are devoted to "tidying
up"-barber shops, beauty shops, and cleaning establishments-and 35% involve food and drink. The one large
department store is owned by whites, and most banks are
branches of white-owned downtown banks. In addition, in
Johnson / BLACK POWER (39 9]
Harlem, most property is absentee-owned and even the
numbers racket is controlled by whites (Clark, 1965 : 27, 28).
Just like the prison, authority and control of the ghetto
come from outside . Carmichael and Hamilton (1967 : ch. 1)
liken this condition of white control to a colonial situation .
Holden (1973 : 31) calls it "a sort of urban peasant
economy" and just like the prison, stemming from the power
to control the ghetto is the power to define its residents .
This corollary is not always true. The Jewish Venetian
ghetto, centuries ago, although created and controlled from
outside, was not defined by outside . The Jews defined
themselves .
In a delicate story by Zangwill (1898 ; originator of the
phrase "melting pot"), a Jewish child ventures out beyond
the ghetto gates.' Before then, "the ghetto was all his world,
and a mighty universe it was, full of everything that the heart
of a child could desire" (1989 : 2). But by the time he
returns, he is a very different person . It is partly because of
the richness and space, "for something larger had come into
his life, a sense of a vast universe without" (1898 : 20). But it
is also because those outside did not abide by Jewish law
which, up to that point, ruled the entire world as far as the
child was concerned . His adventure took place on the holiest
of Jewish holidays and the ghetto shops were closed in
respect . Yet the larger city and its stores were indifferent to
Jewish law and were alive and bustling. The child "could not
shake off the thought of the gay piazza and the wonderful
church where other people prayed other prayers" (1898: 20).
Without knowing what was outside and beyond the gates,
the child did not know that he was poor, or controlled, or
what "others" might think of him; the child could not know
that the gates were erected to keep the Jews in, not the
Christians out. But a Black person, living in an American
ghetto, has constant reminders of the world outside and how
it thinks of him. He is made to feel inferior on all counts. He
lives in a tenement in a country in which (by 1959) three out
of every five families owned their own home (Banfield and
(400] JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES/ JUNE 1975
Wilson, 1963 : 10); his education is inferior and he knows
it;' ° his job is lowly and he knows it.'' As Clark (1965 :
63-64) points out, "Human beings who are forced to live
under ghetto conditions and whose daily experience tells
them that almost nowhere in society are they respected and
granted the ordinary dignity and courtesy accorded to others
will, as a matter of course, begin to doubt their own worth ."
DEHUMANIZED
In no sense does the ghetto dweller suffer the same degree
of moral indignities as the prisoner. But both suffer . In "a
society in which personal possessions and material achievement are closely linked with concepts of personal worth"
(Sykes and Messinger, 1960: 14), both groups of "have-nots"
are reminded continuously of their "moral unworthiness ." In
fact, because of the condition of their lives, both the prisoner
and the ghetto dweller are often perceived as being "less than
human" by outsiders.
It is most obvious in the prisons where, according to Chief
Justice Warren Burger, "we have tended-once the drama of
the trial is over-to regard all criminals as human rubbish"
(Badillo and Haynes, 1972 : 151). In a prison, for example,
requests for better conditions or fairer hearings are treated
with disbelief-prisoners have no right to ask. They have
violated "the moral order and are therefore thought to have
sacrificed their right to be listened to" (Cohen and Taylor,
1972 : 181) . In fact, Spiro Agnew (Badillo and Haynes, 1972:
151) went so far as to find it an "insult to position the
`demands' of convicted felons in a place of equal dignity with
legitimate aspirations of law-abiding American citizens," and
J. Edgar Hoover (Hayner and Ash, 1940 : 577) continually
attacked those who defended the rights of prisoners as "the
cream puff school" with its "moo cow sentimentalities."
Perceived as being less than human, the public can accept
the fact that convicts kill each other and are killed by guards.
As Jackson (1972 : 34) describes it:
Johnson / BLACK POWER [40 1]
Since we are convicts rather than men, a bullet through the heart,
summary execution for fistfighting or stepping across a line is not
extreme or unsound at all. An official is allowed full range in
violent means because a convict can be handled no other way.
For Agnew, as with most other Americans, the convict is
in a special category and his death is not quite as important
as someone else's . "To compare loss of life by those who
violate the society's law with the loss of life by those whose
job it is to uphold it-represents not only an assault on
human sensibility, but an insult to reason" (Badillo and
Haynes, 1972 : 151) .
Like the convict who is not quite human, the ghetto
dweller also finds himself in a "special" category . Whether it
is because of a low IQ (Jensen, 1969), or "pathological
culture" (Moynihan, 1967), the ghetto dweller does not score
high enough in the mainstream . The differences seem to be
translated into a lack of humanness. Banfield is remarkably
candid in The Llnheavenly City Revisited. He defines the
lower-class slum dweller ("city slums are predominantly
black" ; 1974 : 77) as one who is "not troubled by dirt and
dilapidation and . . . does not mind the inadequacy of public
facilities such as schools, parks, hospitals and libraries;
indeed, where such things exist he may destroy them by
carelessness or even by vandalism. Conditions that make the
slum repellent to others are serviceable to him in several
ways" (1974: 72). Here, Banfield is describing people who
seem to be devoid of some quality of humanness. Perhaps,
because he was sensitive to this (mis)interpretation of his
work, Banfield added in his new edition that "Slum persons
are generally apathetic . . . [but] this does not mean that
they are satisfied with their way of life or do not want a
better way to live" (1974 : 71).
Nevertheless, one still might draw the conclusion from
what Banfield says (in both editions) that people in the lower
class lack humanness because he suggests that the lower class
is not "normal" and that "human nature seems loath to
[4021 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES / JUNE 1975
accept a style of life that is so radically present-oriented"
(1970: 54 ; 1974 : 63) .
The "they are not quite human" attitude can easily be
converted into a "let the niggers kill each other" police
policy . Clark (1965 : 86) suggests this is what happens in the
ghetto .
Aggressions of Negroes against whites are more likely to be
punished severely than similar aggressions against other
Negroes. "There is a possibility," he continues, "that
homicide in the ghetto is consistently high because it is not
controlled, if not encouraged . . . . The acceptance of crime
and violence as normal for a ghetto community is associated
with lowering of police vigilance and efficiency when the
victims are also lower-status people .' 11 z
Notions that prisoners and ghetto residents are not human
also result from the adverse poverty of their condition. "How
could they live that way," exclaimed in disbelief really means
"I couldn't live that way." For Lee Rainwater (n.d.: 6-7), if
their lives are "unliveable" either they do not really live that
way, or they are not human.
It is this kind of dehumanizing which the ghetto and
prison share . Jackson (1972 : 9) describes it as "humiliation ."
"For most of us it [the prison] simply looms as the next
phase in a sequence of humiliations. . . . I was prepared for
prison . It required only minor psychic adjustments."
Thus, the prison and the ghetto are alike not only because
authority and control come from outside ; they are alike
because values come from outside. Outsiders define those
inside the ghetto and the prison as lowly and not quite
human. Those inside live with that judgment (which seems to
be corroborated by the material deprivation) . The Black
separatist appeal is that it offers an alternative definition of
self, and the promise of a community .
BLACK AWARENESS
By Black separatist I refer to the groups who have declared
their independence of white America. The Black Muslims and
Johnson / BLACK POWER [ 403]
the Black Panthers, who are continually recruiting in prison
and ghetto (Roberts, 1971 : 58), are included in this category.
Although different in many ways, these groups share the
major characteristics of what Essien-Udom calls "Black
Nationalism." They believe in a separate set of interests,
identity, culture, and for the Muslims, a separate geography .
Although the Panthers criticize the "cultural nationalists,"
they themselves emphasize a separate and unique Black
culture . Rather than stressing "historical roots" and "cultural
heritage," they point to the "concept of `soul,' the commonly shared nuances of language, the essential experience of
oppression, unemployment, rejection and insult suffered by
blacks at the hands of whites" (Major, 1971 : 67). In fact,
while Bobby Seale and Huey Newton were forming the Black
Panther Party for Self-Defense and recruiting in Oakland,
they were also organizing the Soul Student's Advisory
Council (the prototype for Black Student Unions) and they
were also promoting Black studies classes at Merritt College .
(Bobby Seal taught a class in Black history .) The difference
between the cultural nationalists and the Panthers was a
difference in emphasis and personality (Major, 1971 : 68).
Black separatists believe that they should rule themselves
and shape their own destinies (see Essien-Udom, 1962: 6, 7).
The very first of the ten-part Panther program (in Newton,
1972: 3 ; Major, 1971 : appdx . A), for: example, demands
"freedom." "We want power to determine the destiny of our
Black Community ." True, the Panthers have flirted with
white alliances like the Peace and Freedom Party and they
have accepted white money, like the famed Leonard Bernstein fund-raising party. But the maneuvers were expedient,
temporary, and did not compromise the Panthers' Blackness
(Major, 1971 : ch . 4).
Black separatists call for a positive identification with their
Negro-ness (Essien-Udom, 1962 : 6, 7). In other words,
self-rule requires self-definition (best expressed in Carmichael
and Hamilton, 1967 : ch. 1).
[4041 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES/ JUNE 1975
Whites had defined Blacks . Whites had established an
association, according to Erikson (1963 : 242), of "lightclean-clever-white" and "dark-dirty-dumb-nigger," and to be
Black was a liability (one muted the stigma with the word
"colored") .
"I want you to understand how this country has worked
on our minds," said Carmichael (1970: 355) speaking in
1967 to the Black community in Pittsburgh . "On every black
college campus in this country . . . if you going to find the
homecoming queen, she's light, bright and damned near
white."
Now Black separatists began to demand the power to
define-to define themselves and to define their history .
The trouble is that the history of the world has been distorted.
White people have given it to us. . . . White people tell us that we
uncivilized, we illiterate, we savages and they had to come and
civilize us. Can you dig that? Can you dig an Eastland commin' to
civilize you? . . . The trouble with the white world is that nothing
is discovered til they set foot on it. Now dig. If they tell you
Columbus discovered America in 1492, you'd say, yes he did.
Look how silly you are. When they came here there was already
people here, but they don't recognize anybody who's not white.
Columbus was nothing but a dumb cracker. He died thinking he
was in India. That's how dumb he was. (Laughter and applause .)
Carmichael is irreverent because to redefine "Black" he
must topple myths and rewrite history. Black separatists
must offer their audience another world view, one which
dignified Blacks. In the ghetto and in the prison, this is its
appeal. By redefining Black, separatists establish a sense of
self-worth for those who have been declared "unworthy" by
"outsiders."
STRUCTURAL CHANGES
This kind of political reeducation is facilitated by structural changes which have taken place both in the ghetto and
the prison . For prisons, the change was from custodial to
treatment. For the ghetto, the change was from separate to
integrated .
Johnson / BLACK POWER [ 405]
THE PRISON : CUSTODIAL TO TREATMENT
In general, the prisons have been changing from custodial
to treatment-oriented, although not all at the same rate. A
model for this transformation has been described at great
length by McCleery (1960, 1961) whose studies focus on a
small general prison in Hawaii, Oahu, from the mid-1940s to
the mid-1950s .
According to McCleery (1961 : 61), the old traditional
prison was "authoritarian" with "security and submissionthe values most firmly institutionalized in the system ." "The
custodial force used its control over communications to
assert its dominance" and to perform its function "as defined
by the guards, of `waking them, working them, and locking
them up again.' " A necessary part of this formal control was
a strict hierarchy of power among inmates (1961 : 56).
At the top of the inmate hierarchy were the old cons.
Status was geared to adjustment in the prison, and they
maintained their role as elders by means of "certain tolerated
contacts with the guards" (1961 : 71, 73). Their leadership
depended on access to "the grapevine" and official sources.
They mediated between "officials and followers" (1961 : 58,
59).
With the coming of the "liberal revolution"-new warden,
new staff members, publication of the rules, formal orientation programs, and an emphasis on rehabilitation-the old
con lost his monopoly hold. The policy change provided all
inmates equal access to information and influence .
THE GHETTO : SEPARATE TO INTEGRATED
The demise of the "old con" is similar to the toppling of
the "Uncle Tom" in the ghetto . By Uncle Tom I mean what
Carmichael and Hamilton (1967: 10, 11) describe as the
"Negro Establishment." For them it is an "Establishment
resting on a white power base ; of hand-picked blacks whom
that base projects as show pieces out front. These black
leaders are, then, only as powerful as their white kingmakers
will permit them to be."
[4061 JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDIES/ JUNE 1975
Uncle Tom also began to totter in a "liberal revolution."
The initiating change (dignified by a Supreme Court decision-Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka et al ., 347 U.S.
483; 1954) was from separate to integrated . As Cleaver
(1968: 3) describes it, "The acrimonious controversy ignited
by the end of the separate but equal doctrine was to have a
profound effect on me. This controversy awakened me to my
position in America and I began to form a concept of what it
meant to be black in white America."
The change broadened access to information and influence
in and out of the ghetto . Like the prison, new lines of
communication and new resources became available. The
hierarchy in the ghetto began to crack . With the demise of
the old hierarchy and with the help of the media (a new
resource), new leaders became visible and national almost
overnight.) 4
As the accommodating hierarchy lost its hold, the breakdown of the old system revealed a plurality of players who
had specialized functions and special attitudes toward the
changing systems. In the prison, two new groups emerged.
Thus, there were three basic players :
(1) the old con, who was important under the old system and who
wants to continue to be ranked in terms of his adjustment to the
prison system ;
(2) the young toughs who are from reform schools and are apt to
use force;
(3) the treatment-oriented, the marginally criminal first-offenders,
who want to use the legitimate prison system for their own
benefit.
The three prison players have corresponding characters in
the ghetto . The old con is the Uncle Tom; the violent youth
is the "rioter" ; the treatment-oriented is someone like Carl
Stokes or singer James Brown.
Johnson / BLACK POWER [407)
Prison
(Reform school)
Young
X-con
Treatment-
Ghetto
VIOLENCE
Young Rioter
STATUS QUO
USE CHANGING
SYSTEM
Uncle Tom
James Brown
The above three characters, found in ghetto and prison, are
alike in that they take their basic stance, their goals, and their
attitudes from the prison . In fact, it is their attitude toward
the system which defined them . But the separatist, in the
midst of the flattening hierarchy and changing values,
attracted attention and followers by being physically and
spiritually independent of white America .
COMMUNITY
It was not only the appeal of a new definition of self
which helped the separatist recruiting. It was also that they
promised a remedy for the awful anomie which plagued
prison and ghetto . One of the most appealing qualities of
Black separatism is that it promises to break down the
atomism (economic and psychological) of ghetto and prison
life .
" `Every man does his own time,' is the iron sophistry of
the walled city" (Bennett, 1950 : 3). The psychological
aloneness is accompanied by a brokerage system . In the
prison "the most potent source of aggression among prisoners
[is] the drive for personal aggrandizement through exploitation by force and fraud" (Sykes and Messinger, 1960 : 16,
17). The economic arrangements are "devoted to obtaining
goods and services denied by the administration" (Hayner
and Ash, 1939 : 369). It is a brokerage system and the
following anecdote (Raskin, 1972: 56) describes Hoffa's
success in it:
[408] JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDI ES I JUNE 1975
When the Rev. Philip Berrigan was brought to the main
penitentiary in July, 1968, before being shifted to the prison
farm at Allenwood, the anti-war priest found Hoffa eager to be
helpful as a behind bars power broker . In his book, Prison
Journals of a Priest Revolutionary, Father Berrigan says Hoffa
greeted him as a fellow political prisoner and told him he had
ways of straightening things out if the priest was pushed around
or given the wrong kind of job at the farm . The mainstays of the
Hoffa communications network, as described by Father Berrigan,
were other jailed union officials and a coterie-of "Mafia People"
from New York and New Jersey .
Success in the prison system depends on one's skill at
"conniving" which is based on a "code of deception"
(Hayner and Ash, 1939 : 369) . Cannot "conniving," the
"basic process in the interaction between prisoners" (Hayner
and Ash, 1939 : 364), be likened to "the hustle" in the
ghetto?
The hustler "plays it cool" (Schultz, 1969 : 78-87) . It is a
survival technique to enable him to manipulate others for his
own benefit (Rainwater, 1966 : 206) . The hustle is based on
deception and is also rooted in a condition of material
deprivation. The hustler's system, like the brokerage system
in the prison, is an extralegal way of getting goods and
services .
The inevitable results of a code of deception and antagonism is lack of community. Special prison terms as well as a
ghetto language' s may help to create a sense of community
through a "linguistic fraternity," but there can be no real
community of hustlers .' 6 Carmichael (1967 : 357) realizes
this when he says, "We don't have a concept of peoplehood .
That's because we beat each other, we cut each other, we
fight each other, we beat up each other. This country has
destroyed that concept in us . We see ourselves as a bunch of
individuals plundering on each other, committing violence on
each other.""
One of the main attractions of the Black separatist
philosophy, therefore, is the promise of a Black community.
Even with no material improvement, the idea of community
Johnson / BLACK POWER [409]
makes the prison situation m6re tolerable . Any movement in
the direction of solidarity makes "the pains of imprisonment
less severe" (Sykes and Messinger, 1960: 16) . The same is
true for the ghetto .' a
ARE BLACK INMATES POLITICAL PRISONERS?
The similarity of prison and ghetto helps to politicize the
Black inmate . He sees that he is imprisoned not only in the
penitentiary, but also in the ghetto. That is why Malcolm X's
notion (Fraser, 1971 : 49 ; also Badillo and Haynes, 1972 : 11)
that "all America is a prison and jails are just a prison within
a prison" is so popular. The Black inmate begins to see prison
life not as different, but as merely a more extreme case of
ghetto survival, and he begins to see himself not as different,
but as merely "the most vulnerable member of [the Black]
community . . . directly at the mercy of the white power
structure (Chrisman, 1971 : 46) .
It is, in fact, because the prison is so similar to the ghetto
that the Black prisoner can use what he learns inside the
prison to generalize about what happens to him inside the
ghetto . That is why, "In prison, black inmates become
conscious of their position in the social order" (Badillo and
Haynes, 1972: 11) .
And so, the prison politicizes inmates not because it is so
different from what the Black prisoner left behind, but
because it is so similar.
In addition, consistent with the argument that all Blacks
are imprisoned, either by ghetto or prison walls, is the claim
that Blacks are not to blame for their crime-their "imprisonment" is. It is society, not the inmate, which is criminal . As
Chrisman (1971 : 45, 46) explains it, "The majority of black
offenses have their roots in the political and economic
deprivation of Black Americans by the Anglo-American state,
and these are the primary causes and conditions of black
crime."
In prisons, Blacks are shifting the blame for their crime.
They are calling themselves "political prisoners" or "political
( 41 0] JOURNAL OF BLACK STUDI ES / JUNE 1975
victims" because, they argue, "their conditions derive from
the political inequality of black people in America" (Chrisman, 1971 : 45, 46) . The idea is popular. As Jackson (1972 :
36) wrote from Soledad, "There are still some blacks here
who consider themselves criminals, but not many."
NOTES
1. In 1971, in New York State, 70% of the prison inmates were Black; in
Illinois, it was 52%; in California, 45%; in Mississippi, 75% (Badillo and Haynes,
1972 : 9,150).
2. In this sense, Spiro Agnew was right-"If you've seen one ghetto, you've
seen them all."
3. "there are already too many people who think of all prisoners as wild
beasts, without realizing that they too might become bestial if they were locked
long enough in an iron cage" (MacCormick, 1954 : 22).
4. "Nothing . . . prepared him for the ugliness of penitentiary life, the
systematic stripping of inmates of every vestige of human dignity" (Raskin, 1972 :
54).
5. "We want to be looked upon and treated as human beings and responsible
persons, and not labeled subhumans who need to be incarcerated" (MCI-Concord,
1971) .
6. The brief history is from Roth (1970: 5). For the best history of the
Jewish ghetto, see Wirth (1966 : chs. 1-4) .
7. During the 1960s, 3.4 million Blacks moved into central cities; 2.5 million
whites moved out. Six cities have a Black majority and eight have 40% Blacks
(Newsweek, February 19,1973: 33).
8. By 1940, four general ghetto patterns emerged(1) a single central Black belt extending into surrounding areas not yet
completely colored, but rapidly becoming so (New York City, Newark,
Columbus, Buffalo, Atlantic City, Toledo, and Milwaukee) .
(2) two or more Black belts, one in the center of the city and principal area of
concentration, expanding into surrounding areas (Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati,
Indianapolis).
(3) several major Black belts and many minor Black belts all expanding-border
cities (Washington, D.C., Baltimore, St . Louis, Philadelphia).
(4) a single large expanding Black belt, and one or more smaller areas of high
Negro concentration (Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Los Angeles, Boston, Dayton).
9. Zangwill was a Jewish immigrant who, in 1909, wrote a play called "The
Melting Pot."
10. For example, one of the street corner men says, "They graduated me but
I don't know anything" (Liebow, 1967 : 55).
Johnson / BLACK POWER [ 41 1]
11 . "the street corner man puts no l6wer value on the job than does the larger
society around him . . . . Neither the street corner man who performs these jobs
nor the society which requires him to perform them assesses the job as,one `worth
doing and worth doing well"' (Liebow, 1967 : 57-58) .
12. The fact of differential treatment seems to be confirmed by Wilson
(1968: 163) who says, "Negroes have in the eyes of almost all policemen
interviewed, a different set of rules, a desire to be left alone, an unwillingness to
cooperate with the police, and a preference for settling matters themselves."
13 . Dean, for example, writing about Jay Cooper's campaign in Prichard,
Alabama, describes the "Negro Establishment" of that city . They are the older,
established black leaders who "developed political accommodations over the years
with the power structure of the city." According to Dean (1973 : 2), "they viewed
Cooper's candidacy as a direct and presumptuous threat to their status."
14 . One of the consequences of the breakdown of the ghetto hierarchy is the
increased communication with the outside. This is a result in the prisons as well
where there is now easier intrusion and influence of outsiders. Groups inside have
"spawned a network of supporting organizations outside the prison walls." In
addition, "Federal Courts have recently begun to look into the whole question of
prisoners right." Radicals, some of them lawyers and money-raisers, have intruded
with resources to change the balance of power within the prison system. "Half the
prisoners confined in the maximum security wing of San Quentin when George
Jackson was killed there are represented by radical attorneys" (Roberts, 1971 :
58).
15 . See, for example, the Chitling Test, devised by Adrian Dove, a social
worker in Watts It was developed to test one's "ghetto IQ" and it assumes a
ghetto "linguistic fraternity" (New Republic, December 16, 1967).
16 . Hargan (1935-1936 : 359) says of the prison "argot": "Its usefulness . . . lies in its emotional rewards . . . he, too, manages to attach to himself a
modicum of that envy and respect which mankind has always accorded those with
ability to speak in unknown tongues. Most important of all . . . linguistic
fraternity."
17. This is the same debilitating condition that Banfield (1974: 73) was
criticized for describing,
18. See, for example, the discussion of Black Zionism and the idea of a Black
Utopia by Essien-Udom (1962: ch . 10).
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