For those who study Southern history and culture, it's easy to recite the names of the region's infamous prison farms: Angola in Louisiana, Parchman in Mississippi, Cummins in Arkansas.
Songs have been written about them. Stories have been told through the generations, and legends have been born.
"Prison farms emerged as an alternative to convict leasing," Colin Woodward writes in the spring issue of Arkansas Historical Quarterly. "Opened in 1902, Cummins was built along the Arkansas River in Lincoln County, roughly 70 miles southeast of Little Rock. The area was in many ways ideal for a prison.
"Located on prime farmland, Cummins promised great returns for the state when it came to growing crops. With no large towns or cities nearby, prisoners were isolated, especially before automobiles were in wide use. The featureless landscape proved difficult for escapees to maneuver in, and those that tried to climb the levee and swim across the Arkansas River often drowned.
"Cummins became the headquarters of the state penal system, and it has remained the largest prison in Arkansas, both in physical size and population. . . . In 1901, Angola, home of a nationally known prison rodeo and future residence of legendary blues musician Lead Belly, officially became the site of the Louisiana State Penitentiary. That same year, Mississippi's notorious Parchman Farm opened."
In his 1984 book "Vengeance and Justice: Crime and Punishment in the 19th Century American South," Ed Ayers said prison farms had "become a Southern institution" and "the major form of punishment for serious crime."
In an essay titled "Lighting the 'Dark and Evil World': Judge J. Smith Henley, Arkansas, and the Federal Judiciary's Reform of the Southern Prison," Gregory Richard wrote: "The new prison farms not only generated self-sustaining revenue but also brought in profit to near empty Southern state coffers."
Cummins was back in the national news this summer when Rachel Aviv wrote a lengthy piece for The New Yorker titled "Punishment By Pandemic." The magazine had a subhead on the meticulously reported piece that read: "In a penitentiary with one of the U.S.'s largest coronavirus outbreaks, prison terms become death sentences."
Bobby Roberts, the retired director of the Central Arkansas Library System who once served on the Arkansas Board of Corrections, told Aviv: "What always fascinated me about our prison system is the implied contract that exists between the inmate and the correctional officer. There's the written prison rules, and then there's the way things actually operated, which is a matter of both sides understanding the boundaries."
"As the outbreak spread, the contract broke down," Aviv wrote in the June 22 issue of the magazine. "Some officers stopped coming to work, because they were sick or afraid. Those who showed up rarely made security rounds. They delivered meals sporadically, on carts typically used to transport laundry or trash. One man said that when he tried to submit a grievance an officer advised him not to expect the form to be signed by a sergeant, the first step for resolving a complaint. The officer said that he'd seen grievances in a bathroom trash can."
Though no one attributed the action directly to The New Yorker's story, Wendy Kelley, the state's corrections secretary, announced her retirement in late June. On July 23, Gov. Asa Hutchinson announced that 37-year-old Solomon Graves, a veteran staff member of the state's prison and parole agencies, would replace Kelley. Hutchinson said that Graves was stepping up "during a difficult time in Arkansas."
It also was a difficult time in April 1969, when Arkansas native Johnny Cash played a concert for prisoners at Cummins. Cash had become a crusader for prison reform, and few states needed reform more than Arkansas.
"He took the stage that memorable day under a deep blue sky," Woodward wrote. "It was a warm afternoon, with the temperature hitting the mid-70s. Clad in a long jacket, striped pants and boots, his face sweating under a bright sun, Cash and his band played classic songs from a well-established set that included 'Ring of Fire,' 'Folsom Prison Blues,' "I Walk the Line,' and 'Jackson.' Standing before the crowd of between 800 and 900 men (and a few women), Cash also featured a song he had written for the occasion."
That song was titled "When I Get Out of Cummins." It told the story of a prisoner leaving Cummins and going to the steps of the state Capitol in Little Rock to demand change. Gov. Winthrop Rockefeller and his prison director Robert Sarver were in attendance that day. At the end of the song, Cash cried out: "There's a lot of things that need changin', Mr. Legislator Man."
"No one would have argued with Cash, who was by then the biggest country music star in America, selling more albums in 1969 than the Beatles," Woodward wrote. "While Cash's Cummins concert never became as famous as his performances at Folsom or San Quentin prisons, it represented a fascinating intersection of Arkansas' dark and disturbing penal history and the career of one of the nation's most conspicuous advocates for inmates. The concert also marked the crowning moment of a partnership between two Arkansans, Cash and Rockefeller, of very different backgrounds."
Contrary to what many believe, Cash never served hard time. But this native of Kingsland in south Arkansas had struggled with drug addiction and had experienced overnight stays in jail.
"The culture of a thousand years is shattered with the clanging of the cell door behind you," Cash wrote in 1968. "Life outside, behind you immediately becomes unreal. You begin to not care that it exists. All you have with you in the cell is your bare animal instincts. ... Behind the bars, locked out from 'society,' you're being rehabilitated, corrected, re-briefed, re-educated on life itself, without you having the opportunity of really reliving it. ... How could this torment possibly do anybody any good?"
Rockefeller, who had moved to Arkansas in 1953 from New York, believed that the prison farms were barbaric. In his 1967 inaugural address, Rockefeller said that Arkansas had the worst prison system in the country. He asked the Legislature for "major reforms" that would clear up "deplorable conditions."
The Democrats who dominated the Legislature blocked the new Republican governor at every turn. In her book "Agenda for Reform," Cathy Urwin called the prison situation "the most widely publicized crisis of his four years in office."
"The Arkansas prison system had been troubled since its inception," Woodward wrote. "In 1846, inmates in Little Rock rioted and burned down the penitentiary. It was rebuilt on the high ground where the state Capitol now stands. In the wake of the great human and economic destruction of the Civil War, Arkansas did not make humane prison conditions a high priority. Officials, seeking an easy source of revenue and a means of controlling its poor white and Black population, instead instituted the horrific convict leasing system.
"Convict leasing amounted to a death sentence for many, a disproportionate number of them African Americans. Essentially sold as slave laborers to mining camps and other profit-
seeking businesses, prisoners were beaten, worked like chattel, and sometimes murdered."
Cash knew this history and wanted to do what he could to help Rockefeller. He flew down on the governor's private jet, had lunch with inmates, and visited cells. The Carter Family and Statler Brothers also performed that day.
Woodward called the concert "a singular moment in the history of Arkansas prisons and the efforts at reform made by Rockefeller and his supporters. Cash offered a positive message at a time when the prisons were usually the subject of negative--at times horrifying--headlines."
More than half a century later--as The New Yorker showed us this summer--we still have a long way to go.
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Rex Nelson is a senior editor at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.