Committee:

Tera W. Hunter, adviser
Rosina Lozano
Naomi Murakawa
Sarah Haley, Columbia University

Abstract:

“They taken him away from us” explores how transformations in the Texas prison system impacted the social ties of free and incarcerated Black, ethnic Mexican, Indigenous, and white people between 1865 and 1912. This dissertation examines the lived experiences of and relationships among three groups: incarcerated people, incarcerated people’s families, and incarcerated people’s communities. Following the end of the Civil War, prison, local, and state officials expanded the capacity and incarcerated population of the state prison system, which made it increasingly visible and tangible to a larger number of Texas residents. Shaped by factors like race, gender, class, and ethnicity, these changes had direct impacts on the intimate lives of free and incarcerated Texas residents, especially those connected to incarcerated people through kinship and community.

Drawing on extensive archival materials such as state and prison records, this dissertation has three main arguments. First, it argues that social alienation—the process of separating incarcerated people from their families, communities, fellow prisoners, and the outside world— was a central punitive goal of the state. Second, state punishment extended to incarcerated people’s families and communities, often unintentionally. Through experiences of family separation, financial stressors, and costly battles for clemency, many free Texans argued that the state punished them, too. Third, free people who encountered the Texas prison system in these intimate ways–namely through the system’s effects on their social ties–also articulated their own definitions of freedom and justice rooted in people’s abilities to cultivate, support, and participate in their social ties without intervention from the state.

Overall, this dissertation offers a new way to think about the development and consequences of state punishment after the Civil War and broadens the historical actors typically included in histories of incarceration. Extending beyond a sole focus on carceral institutions, this study centers an analysis of incarceration’s impacts on relationships, families, and communities to trace the intimate histories of incarceration. In doing so, these intimate histories shed light on the most human parts of those who consistently faced state violence, surveillance, and dehumanization.

A copy of the dissertation will be available for review two weeks before the exam. Contact Lee Horinko for a copy of the dissertation and the Zoom meeting link and password.

All are welcome and encouraged to attend.