Seeing Identity within a Carceral Environment: Race and Gender within sites of the Southern Convict Lease System

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Following the abolishment of chattel slavery in the United Stated, southern legislatures found a replacement for enslaved African American labor in their prison populations. Building on racist laws and racially prejudiced prosecutions, southern legislatures systematically charged, convicted, and then sold hundreds of thousands of prisoners to private industry. Tens of thousands perished under this system. In Tennessee, the vast majority of these prisoners were African Americans, although poor and politically unconnected white and Native American men were also ensnared in this unjust system. At the Lone Rock Stockade, the largest private prison stockade in Tennessee, archaeologists approach the difficult question of prisoner identities through an intersectional lens that understands race as one identity among a constellation of identifies that fundamentally shaped prisoners’ experiences of incarceration. In this paper, I will examine what an intersectional approach to “seeing” the African Diaspora through the material culture of incarceration adds to our understanding of the nuances and negotiations of power and identity in a powerless and anonymous place.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Seeing Migrant and Diaspora Communities Archaeologically: Beyond the Cultural Fixity/Fluidity Binary   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36087.0