Hellraisers Journal: Frank Tannenbaum Revisits Blackwell’s Island Prison as a Free Man

You ought to be out raising hell. This is the fighting age.
Put on your fighting clothes.
-Mother Jones
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Tuesday April 25, 1916
From The Masses: Frank Tannenbaum on Reforms at Blackwell's

Frank Tannenbaum on way to jail, 1914_0.png

Within the pages of the April edition of The Masses, Frank Tannenbaum tells of his visit, as a free man, to Blackwell's Island Prison:

BLACKWELL'S REVISITED

-By Frank Tanenbaum
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Blackwell's Island Penitentiary, New York.png
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EDITORIAL NOTE,-Some of the friends of THE MASSES complain that we don't print cheerful news very often, and don't go out our way to give credit where it is due. We invite their attention to this article. For the most part we prefer to let our readers get their news of "how much better the world is getting day by day" from the newspapers, which specialize in such information. But we feel it to be peculiarly appropriate that THE MASSES should report the improvements in the management of Blackwell's Island, since it was in THE MASSES that Frank Tanenbaum's series of blasting exposures of that institution originally appeared. These articles drew attention to the state of affairs existing there, provoked several investigations in which all of Tanenbaums's charges were confirmed, and resulted in the retirement of the old warden and the commencement of a better regime. In this article Frank Tanenbaum [Tannenbaum] compares what he sees as a visitor to the prison under the new regime with what he experienced as a prisoner for eleven months, when he was sent to the Island for leading the army of the unemployed to the churches of New York City to demand food and shelter in the tragic winter of 1913-14. It is an amusing bit of irony that certain arbiters of the elegancies of revolution have lately decided (as appears from an editorial in our contemporary, Revolt), to regard Frank Tanenbaum as a lost soul, inasmuch as he insists on telling the truth about Blackwell's Island even when the truth has ceased to be scandalous and horrible.

I HAD heard rumors about the wonderful changes that had been made in Blackwell's Island Penitentiary since my release, but I did not believe them. I offered to bet that if I went over I would find things just about as bad as they were when I wrote about them in THE MASSES last year.

Soon after that, I had a chance to go. I talked with Bardette Lewis, the present Commissioner of Correction, City of New York, and he told me about the changes. I told him I wanted to find out for myself. So on New Year's day I found myself on my way to the penitentiary on Blackwell's Island.

Going down Fifty-first street towards the dock, I saw across the river the gray, dark, massive stone buildings, with the little windows and iron bars, behind which I had been a prisoner for a year. There arose in me a peculiar feeling of hatred and pain, which was unlike anything I had ever felt before.

It was with a fast beating heart that I stepped from the boat and walked towards the prison. I had gone there before on a dreary, gray Friday morning, handcuffed to a tall negro, who was doing his best to lighten the dejection that had settled on the two score of us on our way to the prison that morning.

A little way from the prison in a shed I met a guard keeping watch. Seeing me approach, he stepped out into the road and said, "Where are you going, what are you doing here?" for he recognized an ex-convict. "I am going to see the commissioner by appointment." "Are you a department man now?" he asked. "No, I just have an appointment with the commissioner." "All right." He walked me up the gate. And as the big, iron door swung open, Carney, a guard, whose reputation under the old system was not of the best, stuck his hands through the bar and said, "Happy New Year, Frank, glad to see you come in the front way." And then after letting me in went to get the Warden, who was up in the Chapel.

The large room in which I found myself was the one where our pedigrees were taken on our first visit to the prison. I remember the little window, behind which sat an old, little, gray-haired clerk with a big cigar in his mouth and asked me what Church do I belonged to. "To none," "What Church shall I put you down to?" "Anyone you please, I don't care." "I will put you down to the Jewish Church." "All right, let it be the Jewish Church." Taking the cigar out of his mouth, he leered at me and squinted up his eye, saying, "If you are caught going to any other Church you will be punished." I recalled too that after we had our hair clipped and given a bath, our possessions were taken away from us, amongst which were some books which I had. I asked to be permitted to retain at least one of the books; Carney picked out a soft covered one, looked at the title and handed it to me, saying, "We permit prisoners to bring in anything that is religious." It was William Morris' "News from Nowhere"!

The large room has since been painted and decorated; the keepers I met there held no clubs-certainly an innovation to Blackwell's Island since the days I knew it. A few seconds later, the Warden, John J. Murtha, came down and greeted me with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, "Glad to see you, come upstairs where the boys are giving a Minstrel show."

As I walked into the Chapel, I found it crowded with boys, who were chatting and laughing, and as they saw me enter they greeted me from all over the room with "Hello Frank! Happy New Year, Frank!" This too was a change.

I remember the chapel as we used to go to it on a Saturday or Sunday to escape from the misery of our small dark cells, and in the hope that we would see some of our friends, and also in the hope that we would be able to exchange a few words, for talking was prohibited. Many a man went to the "cooler" for talking in the Chapel. I remember one day on Yom Kippur, when two of the boys were talking and one of the keepers grabbed them; the other men in the room jumped to their feet and shouted, "Let them alone!" One of the boys grabbed a chair. The keeper drew his gun, backed up against the wall, and after everything quieted down the boys went to the cooler, of course.

The show being given was by the boys themselves; they had been given time to learn their parts. It is a new thing in the history of Blackwell's Island.

Penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, New York.png
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Later on I walked down through the prison and met one of my friends in the corner, smiling, very glad to see me, "Hello Red!" "Hello Frank, gee, but it is good to see you come in like this." I said: "Red, tell me how things are now. I want you to tell me the truth." "Well, you see Frank," he said, "it is all different, everything is changed; the men are treated like men now; we have a League of our own, and we can read newspapers and write all the letters that we want to." Here he stopped and putting his hand on my shoulder, said, "You know the kite I got out for you the first day you came here." I did indeed. I had not been in the prison two hours when Red supplied me with paper, stamps and envelopes for two letters, and got them out for me, running the risk of going to the cooler and losing his privileges. He said, "You know I have just been thinking of it. How things do change, don't they?" I asked: "What about dope, do you still peddle that?" "No, why Frank, the boys wouldn't stand for it now. Why, even I wouldn't stand for it. The boys don't need it any more. We can play baseball, basketball, have regular drills every day, and we get concerts and the men are not put in the cooler so often. Yes, I think if a man goes to the cooler now it is his own fault."

A little further on I saw Jimmy. He said, "You remember I could not decorate my cell and got into trouble. Look at it now, it is number eleven." I did. Jim is quite an artist. He used to be an incorrigible man when I was there. He used to get into trouble almost oftener than I did, and I spent seven and a half months out of eleven in one or another form of punishment.

I walked all over the prison; I saw everything I wanted to, spoke to everybody that I wanted to speak to, visited the cooler, the laundry, the kitchen, the dining room and the different cell blocks, and I found that the prison was an altogether different institution from what it was the day I left there, both in its spirit and in its physical environment.

I am not defending the present prison system, but I can't help but say this place is different and better than it was.

I found that all the demands I had made for the men, had been given them; and they numbered some twenty-five. In fact, they had been given more than that. A good number of the keepers, who were most hated by the men, have been transferred from the island. Renegy, on account of whom I spent two months in solitary, is not there any more.

The following definite changes have been made: the men are taken out of their cell Saturdays and Sundays and permitted to play baseball and basketball; the men have a glee club; they can read newspapers, write all the letters they want, the sick are segregated, the laundry has a steam machine, and a sterilizer is used; the cells of the new prison have been painted, and those in the old prison are washed regularly to keep the bugs down. I asked about fifty men in regard to it and they all agreed there were very few bugs. The blankets are fumigated and cleaned before given to new men; beds have been put in the cooler, and the men are given something to read while there and are given three meals a day.

While I was there I had to sleep on the hard stone floor with a little piece of bread and water every twenty-four hours, next to an open bucket of filth, with a torn blanket and ten-inch rats for company. I broke the handle off the bucket and scratched geometric figures on the wall to keep me from going crazy.

The men now decorate their cells, and their League serves as a stay-off against any persecution that might be permitted by the keepers.

For the warden, I want to say that he is a clean, capable man, doing the best he can with the situation, anxious to do better whenever possible. It is true that he does not believe in self-government of prisoners as does Thomas Mott Osborne, but then there are not many in the prison world who see as far as Osborne does.

I want to conclude this article by a letter I received recently from one of the boys, and which made me very happy:

Friend Frank-I was really surprise when I saw you marching in the main hall with the warden. My hearts delight was when you came here as a guest and it also done me good to speak to you in the Chapel. It reminded me of the old times and besides the boys here think the world of you for the great work you have done in this prison.

[Photographs added.]

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SOURCE
The Masses
(New York, New York)
-April 1916
http://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses060/1
"Blackwell's Revisited" -by Frank Tanenbaum
http://dlib.nyu.edu/themasses/books/masses060/24

IMAGES
Frank Tannenbaum on way to jail, 1914
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/3/11/1283785/-Hellraisers-Journal-Win...
Blackwell's Island Penitentiary, New York
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/blakwel1.html
Penitentiary on Blackwell's Island, New York
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/realestate/streetscapes-the-penitentia...

See also:

Hellraisers Journal: Homeless & Hungry of New York City Fail to Freeze & Starve in Orderly Manner -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/06/1290034/-Hellraisers-Journal-Ho...

Hellraisers Journal: Winter 1913-14, Industrial Workers of the World Organizes Unemployed Workers -by JayRaye
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/11/1283785/-Hellraisers-Journal-Wi...

DK tag: Frank Tannenbaum
http://www.dailykos.com/news/FrankTannenbaum

Frank Tannenbaum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Tannenbaum

Crime and Community
-by Frank Tannenbaum
Columbia U Press, 1938
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015003659664;view=2up;seq=6

For more on Blackwell's Island Penitentiary:
http://www.correctionhistory.org/html/chronicl/nycdoc/html/blakwel1.html

News from Nowhere by William Morris
https://www.marxists.org/archive/morris/works/1890/nowhere/nowhere.htm

For more on Thomas Mott Osborne:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Mott_Osborne

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Popular Wobbly - The Grand Industrial Band
Lyrics by T-Bone Slim
http://www.folkarchive.de/wild1.html

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Gerrit's picture

Very cool story, JaeRae. For we do win victories now and then, here and there. And when things change, it is proper to acknowledge and celebrate. Oh, to be a popular Wobblie :=) Enjoy your evening,

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Resilience: practical action to improve things we can control.
3D+: developing language for postmodern spirituality.

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Never be deceived that the rich will allow you to vote away their wealth.-Lucy Parsons