Texas Prisons and the Midnight Special (Houston, Austin: leasing, mattresses, to buy)

[CptnRn]

I recall hearing a radio program (NPR?) several years ago that I believe was at least partially narrated by UT Professor Wayne Bell. It talked about how the song "The Midnight Special" had its beginning in the Texas prisions. I believe it was part of a series, but I can't find anything about it on the NPR website.

I'd love to find that series if it is available for purchase. Does anyone else have any information about it?

Well, you wake up in the mornin', you hear the work bell ring,
And they march you to the table to see the same old thing.
Ain't no food upon the table, and no pork up in the pan.
But you better not complain, boy, you get in trouble with the man.

CHORUS:
Let the Midnight Special shine 'er light on me,
Let the Midnight Special shine 'er light on me,
Let the Midnight Special shine 'er light on me,
Let the Midnight Special shine 'er everlovin' light on me.

Yonder come miss Rosie, how in the world did you know?
By the way she wears her apron, and the clothes she wore.
Umbrella on her shoulder, piece of paper in her hand;
She come to see the gov'nor, she wants to free her man.

CHORUS

If you're ever in Houston, well, you better do the right;
You better not gamble, there, you better not fight, at all
Or the sheriff will grab ya and the boys will bring you down.
The next thing you know, boy, Oh! You're prison bound.

CHORUS

CHORUS

As I recall, the story was that the train passed by the prison farm at night, the sound and light from it inspired many prisoner's dreams of escaping the drudgery of the prison farm and hopping aboard that train.

Let the Midnight Special shine 'er everlovin' light on me.

The Midnight Special - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

That song refers to the Southern Pacific's Golden Gate Limited, which was locally known in Houston, Texas, as the Midnight Special, because it departed Houston's Southern Pacific Depot at midnight.

The Texas prison farms were only one step above slavery and had in fact come into existence after the civil war as a mechanism for providing cheap labor to cotton plantations in southern Texas who could no longer own slaves.

I wonder if this was the Huntsville prision?

Texas Prison Museum be sure to check out the gift shop.

The facility is the oldest Texas state prison, and opened in 1849.

I just found this NPR web page about Huntsville NPR's All Things Considered: Huntsville Prison Blues

[stillkit]

The story was that if the train's headlight illuminated your cell, you'd be set free.

Of course, it never did because the track curved away from the prison.

[catman]

I love that song. I have versions by Van Morrison and Johnny Rivers.

[CptnRn]

I recalled more about the radio program last night. The prisioners were treated worse then most slaves because the land owners didn't have to buy them. If one got sick, injured or died, they could easily get replacements from the prision. So there wasn't much incentive to take care of them. It must have been a hellish existence.

[CptnRn]

I found some more information on the prison farms here:

Handbook of Texas Online - PRISON SYSTEM

To summarize what I think are the interesting bits related to this thread:

On October 1, 1849, the first prisoner, a convicted horse thief from Fayette County, entered the partially completed Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville. The facility held only three prisoners in 1849, but by 1855 it housed seventy-five convicts, and by 1860, 182.

By 1856 the state had built a cotton and wool mill at Huntsville in order to make the penitentiary self-sustaining. The mill, which could process 500 bales of cotton and 6,000 pounds of wool annually, provided money to the state. During the Civil War the penitentiary sold more than two million yards of cotton and nearly 300,000 yards of wool to both civilians and the government of the Confederate States of America. Wartime production made a profit of $800,000. The end of the war and reduced demand for cotton and wool products, however, resulted in financial difficulties as the prison population began to grow.

In 1867 the prison board began leasing prisoners to railroads, and large numbers of private employers. In 1871 - 1883 they leased out the entire Huntsville and later the Rusk Penitentiary to private companies. The Rusk Penitentiary was constructed to develop iron-ore deposits in East Texas.

The leasing of prisoners was controversial and was abolished in 1910, but during the "leasing era" the state contracted many prisoners out to railroads, mining companies, and plantations. It also entered into share-cropping arrangements with private farm owners and purchased large plantations for commercial agricultural production.

Between 1885 and 1887 about 500 prisoners quarried granite and limestone for construction of the new Capitol in Austin; prisoners at the Rusk Penitentiary manufactured the building's interior cast-iron features. Convicts also constructed the Texas State Railroad from Rusk to Palestine between 1893 and 1909.

The prison population increased from 489 in 1870 to 1,738 by 1878. It reached 3,199 by 1890 and 4,109 by 1900. The number declined slightly during the remaining years of the convict lease, reaching 3,471 at the end of 1912. During the years 1870-1912, 59 to 60 percent of Texas state prisoners were black, 30 to 40 percent were white, and 10 percent were Hispanic. Female prisoners usually constituted less than 2 percent of the total.

After the convict lease system was appealed, the state continued to operate 81,000 acres (126 square miles) of prison farm lands for cultivation of sugarcane, cottone, corn, feed crops and vegetables but was rarely profitable.

In addition to working the farmlands convicts also manufactured bricks, ice, wagons, railcars, lumber, brooms, paint, mattresses, iron ore, boxes, furniture, shoes, clothing, sheet metal, and operated a printing shop, license-plate factory, and a number of food-processing plants to manufacture goods for the prison and other state agencies. TDC later "developed a dental laboratory, garment factories, a bus-repair shop, a tire-recapping facility, a coffee-roasting plant, a wood shop, and a record-conversion operation".

One of the more interesting ventures they went into was the Prison Rodeo. I was excited to read about it in Texas Monthly when I first moved to Texas, and was sad to hear they had discontinued it before I got around to attending one:

General manager Marshall Lee Simmons, who served from April 1930 to November 1935, proved especially adept at public relations and helped promote a favorable image for the prison system by inaugurating the Texas Prison Rodeo, which was performed from 1931 to 1986 at the Huntsville Penitentiary.

Prison industrial operations had expanded by 1988 to include factories producing for TDC and other agencies. Industrial facilities made stainless steel, license plates, retreaded tires, and fabricated metal products, as well as garments, mattresses, cardboard boxes, woodwork, shoes, refinished furniture, highway signs, soap, and wax. The prison system managed a print shop, textile mills, and bus-repair and record-conversion facilities. Some prisoners engaged in construction and building maintenance on prison property, while others continued to work in farming and food processing. As of August 1988 TDC employed more than 19,000 regular staff members and 779 Windham School personnel. The prison system requested a 1990-91 biennium budget of more than $1.7 billion.