Texas Gulag by Gary Brown

Author:Gary Brown [Gary Brown]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

“Mules cost money, men don’t,” Bill Mills claimed field bosses told inmates during the convict lease system. Mules were used in Texas prisons into the 1950s, and many convict memoirs recall the animals being treated better than the inmates who utilized them. Photo source: Texas State Archives, courtesy of Jester III unit, Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

As severe as assignment to the dark cell would seem, its use was seen by prison officials as the first warning prior to subsequent punishments by the bat. Once Mills had received his first warning in that darkened cell, his later punishments amounted to beatings at the hands of the guards.

Bill Mills claims he was later punished three more times for “whispering too loudly in the building.”

In 1915 he was sent to the nearby Harlem Farm, where he worked at “sugar rolling,” or cutting sugarcane. A year later, back at the Imperial Farm, he was caught talking to another inmate in the cotton fields and assigned a quota of picking six hundred pounds that day. He claims he weighed in at the end of the day with 597 pounds and as a result was held down and whipped for laziness.

Mills, in 25 Years Behind Prison Bars, details a rare account almost never reported in prison—a guard revolt. It was at the Imperial Farm in July of 1917 that a new captain was assigned from the Walls unit in Huntsville to take charge of the work squads. The captain became known as “Pistol Pete” and would remain at Imperial from July 1 to September 10 of 1917.

During that period, administration of a strapping or use of the bat had at least some institutional regulation with regards to the number of lashes and a prohibition against the striking on bloody areas of the body. Almost every inmate narrative describing the use of the leather instrument suggested prison rules were routinely ignored.

But the new Imperial Farm captain, Pistol Pete, completely disregarded the rules and rewrote his own set of punishment standards, according to Mills. Using a six-foot bullwhip, which was absolutely banned, he would ride among the field crews, lashing out at any nearby inmate whether that convict was picking his quota or not. Each day, as a result, several inmates would be carried to the hospital on the water wagon to be treated for the severe cuts and welts on their backs.

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