“With Dignity Intact”: Rainbow Coalitions, Control Units, and Struggles for Human Rights in the U.S. Federal Prison System, 1969–74

I will discuss the collective struggles, cultural imagination, and social movement activity in three federal prisons from 1969-1974, centering the radicalization of prisoners’ rights organizing in context of civil and human rights struggles during this time.  I’ll discuss how and why prisoners came together to change the conditions of their lives; challenge the power relations and terms of order and control within inside prisons; and in the process redefine the meanings of justice, power and dignity through the creation of political organizations and projects that not only exposed the intersections of racism, gender, prisons and institutional violence, but influenced social movement activity outside the walls. With Dignity Intact complicates a domination/resistance narrative by centering the historical contexts, social relations and political organizing that led to alliances and coalitions between Black, Puerto Rican, Chicano, Native American, and White male prisoners at three federal prisons, McNeil Island, WA; Leavenworth Kansas; and Marion, Il., during the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Inspired and taking the lead from these imprisoned activists, prisoner support organizations, family members, lawyers, academics, psychologists, psychiatrists and journalists contributed to these movements in a variety of ways. Guided by decisions inside the walls, family member, friends and community organized galvanized grassroots efforts to support these movements; progressive legal organizations developed prison legal projects; universities sponsored law clinics; psychologists intervened in the use of Behavior Modification programs; journalists investigated wardens, litigated with institutions, and exposed the violences behind prison walls; and in 1972, Federal congresspersons led by then freshman Representative (from Berkeley) Ron Dellums, and Herman Badillo from New York, proposed the Omnibus Penal Reform Act that was essentially a distillation of many of the demands that emerged from political activity during these  years, including sanctions and repercussions for wardens and guards violating the broad proposed laws, and full post-incarceration re-enfranchisement.