The Forgotten History of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm: Part One

In this three part series, made in collaboration with the Atlanta Community Press, we dive into the lost and incomplete history of the Old Atlanta Prison Farm. 

https://atlpresscollective.com/2021/08/14/history-of-the-atlanta-city-prison-farm/

https://atlsolidarity.org

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to It Could Happen Here, the podcast about stuff
falling apart and how we can maybe put some of
it back together. Today I'm your host, Garrison Davis. Though
this episode is going to be more of an it
did happen here sort of thing, as this is part
one of a special three part series made in collaboration

(00:25):
with the Atlantic Community Press about the history of the
old Atlanta Prison Farm. If you haven't listened to my
super sized three hour two part series on the Defend
the Atlanta Forest Movement from last May, I'd recommend you
check that out just for you know, extra context, but

(00:46):
it's not strictly necessary, as will be mostly going over
history for these next few episodes, although I will sprinkle
in updates about what's been happening in Atlanta related to
the Stop Cop City movement throughout this areas. At the
end of this episode there will be a summary about
the most recent week of action now for this series,

(01:09):
not only did the Atlantic Community Press provide the vast
majority of the historical research and format for these episodes,
I was also able to record with two members of
the collective, Sam and Laura, so you'll hear snippets of
our conversations over the course of these next few episodes,
as well last year, in the lead up to the

(01:30):
Atlantis City Council signing over hundreds of acres of forest
to the Atlanta Police Foundation to build a state of
the art militarized police training facility, complete with a large
mock city. Around that same time, a group of people
decided to look into the history of the land in question,
famed for being the site of an old federal prison

(01:52):
honor farm. This was also around the same time last year,
when more atrocities of the residential school systems were being unearthed,
and with the Atlanta Police Foundations plans to bulldoze large
sections of forest that were once used as an old
labor prison, the possibility of disturbing forgotten grave sites seems

(02:14):
to be worth considering. UM okay, I'm Sam. I help
out with I do research for the Atlantic Community Press
Collective UM so that means I file open records requests.
I accidentally I helped accidentally write a seventeen page history
report in summer, and I listened to fun things like

(02:38):
community stakeholders committee meetings and city council meetings. What is
the inception for the Atlantic Community press collective. So at
the beginning it was me, Laura, and another friend of ours,
and we were all just kind of involved on the
periphery of the movement. Laura, please feel free to correct

(02:59):
me if direct me also, but just as part of
the general movement and resistance to Cops City, one of
us raised the question I based on when the prison
farm was an operation. One of us asked, I wonder
if they're unmarked graves there, because given the error in
which the prison farm was an operation, it's not unrealistic

(03:22):
that people were just buried on site, especially m for
prisoners who didn't have families to claim them. Is horrible,
but there you go. Um. That was sort of the
genesis of our history report, and then I guess naturally,
as an extension of that, we started asking questions of
city government and county government about the I guess construction

(03:47):
process of Cops City. Throughout the development of Cops City,
concerns regarding environmental racism, police violence, and land stewardship in
an era of climate change have all been discussed, if
not by local government or the Atlanta Police Foundation, but
at least by community members, some local press, and national media.
Despite this very little is actually publicly known about the

(04:11):
actual history of the land that Atlanta Police Foundation wants
to build a Cops city on, and the history of
the prison farm itself. The most often cited histories suggests
the land was the site of a federal prison farm
that was later taken over by the city and then
soon abandoned. Archival research into the site on Key Road,

(04:34):
conducted by volunteers with the Atlantic Community Press tell a
different story. Months of archival research revealed that not only
was it never run federally, it was run as a
city prison farm uninterrupted from about nineteen twenty to the
early nineteen nineties, and doing considerable harm to those incarcerated throughout,

(04:57):
despite claims of reform made at every stage. Through the
gathering of old legal notices, old newspaper articles, letters from nurses,
legislative and inspection records, and oral histories of forgotten legacy
of torture, overcrowding, slave conditions quote unquote, the lack of healthcare,

(05:19):
labor strikes, death, and unmarked Popper's graves have slowly been
rediscovered through Atlanta's radical scene, and this just barely scratches
the surface. As the Atlantic Community Press conducted their research
to conflicting surprises arose, one being that there was just
so much available historical documentation that seemingly very few people

(05:44):
had dug into and put together correctly in the past,
and two that there was so much information that was
just missing entirely, records that were either just missing, destroyed, misfiled,
or possibly were never kept in the first place. The
nature of this kind of archival research is pulling on

(06:05):
one question and then finding dozens more. With limited time
and resources, you can find yourself with more questions than
definitive answers. These episodes are meant to just be a
brief overview of the broad strokes of this history, while
also serving as a survey of the possible directions that
further research can take. Many people, including an individual on

(06:29):
the Community Stakeholder Advisory Committee for the Atlanta Public Safety
Training Center a k a COP City, have advocated that
there must be responsible, in depth investigations into the history
of this land and many of its current physical attributes
before any further development could take place. Katherine Nichols already

(06:52):
laid the groundwork for such research in her thesis on
the Unmarked Graves and burial Grounds of the Brandon Indian
Residential school system and the history of what took place
during its operation. A three pronged approach includes archivalry research,
field research, and qualitative interviews with effective members of community.

(07:14):
This type of research will be discussed more in the
third episode. However, this research would take time, and with
construction and deforestation attempts proceeding at an increasing rate, the
opportunity to do further on the ground historical research is
quickly vanishing. The same policing institutions that caused so much

(07:34):
harm are increasingly trying to physically bulldoze away centuries of history.
We did not set out to write this report. We
did not We did not know literally when we started
writing this that the Wooten Report and the Save Weel
Atlanta prison Farm campaigns proved it incorrect history. We didn't
know there were two more than two, frankly, prison farms.

(07:58):
No one's wrong for not knowing about the But we've
emailed this to city Council repeatedly. Laura has Laura has
done amazing, tenacious work and just making sure that every
single government official involved in this project knows exactly what
kind of violence there perpetuating. The cops. City is bad

(08:18):
enough on its own, but when you have an accurate
historical understanding of not just what they are building, but
where they are building it, it's beyond the pale. It's
beyond belief. It's it's disgusting. They want to build this
and stolen indigenous plan. They want to build this on
a slave plantation? Are you kidding me? What were we
out in the streets for? What are people still out

(08:41):
in the streets for. I know they know what we're saying.
I know they know who we are. I know they're listening.
It's just disgusting. It's disgusting to me. Before we continue,

(09:02):
let's talk a little bit about the idea of history.
I think for a lot of people, especially white people,
are engagement with history is often so distant. We keep
ourselves othered conceptualizing history as some abstract narrative instead of
the direct flesh and blood we ourselves and our systemic

(09:25):
relations grew out of. History should be the tales and
songs of joy and sorrow and pain, generational wisdom and
trauma told by the people who lived it, not just
a list of names and the numerical record keeping of
the structures that caused ongoing suffering which still benefit from

(09:46):
this abstraction. Preserving history for its own sake is all
fine and good, but doing preservation with an explicit, ecological
and intersectional drive can be much more insightful, not to mention,
respectful for those who it literally happened to in the past.
This perspective argues for the preservation on the basis of

(10:07):
its material effects on people both past and present, and
to demonstrate the direct continuity of control of these structures
over the people they affect and the repeating patterns of
rhetoric used to justify it. Similarly, Katherine Nichols points out
in her residential school thesis that it's essential to view

(10:28):
this type of history and these records within a full
living context. Obviously, a complete consideration of context is outside
the small scope of this podcast and could probably make
up multiple volumes of books. The time period will be
diving into, roughly the nineteen twenties to present day, has

(10:50):
been home to an unceasing trend of the criminalization of
many marginalized peoples, especially black, Indigenous, poor, disabled, and mentally
ill people, which will see demonstrated throughout the story told
here and on into the present. This criminalization of marginalized

(11:11):
people's coincides with institutions of power, engaging in what Lauren
Berland calls the slow death. The phrase slow death refers
to the physical wearing out of a population and the
deterioration of people in that population that is very nearly
a defining condition of their experience and historical existence. It's

(11:36):
like a mass phenomenon of material and metaphysical restriction that
typically already marginalized people face when living under capitalist or
authoritative governing structures. The slow death manifests by intentionally and
repeatedly subjugating people to events and conditions known to contribute

(11:57):
to suffering, resulting in an early death of those deemed
less valuable by capital interests, sometimes even at their own expense,
other times for the sake of profit. All that gets
passed down through generations, with the corresponding generational trauma that
becomes a defining feature of personal and cultural identity. In

(12:20):
the case of the prison Farm, we see the slow
death and living history in many forms. A swastika found
in one of the bedrooms white inmates going on strike
shortly after the prison farm is racially integrated. Stokely Carmichael
is held at the farm for several days on the

(12:40):
charge of loitering at the height of the civil rights era.
After Martin Luther King's assassination, donkeys from the prison farm
pull his casket through town. Nurses beg for more tuberculosis
tests for overcrowded prisoners. Homeless alcoholics are repeatedly cycled in
and out of the system um All of these instances

(13:02):
are similar to others both at the time and now
in present today, and reflect the racial and class dynamics
at the heart of the constral system. These same socio
political forces continued to shape the social landscape of Atlanta,
whether that be through the criminalization of Atlanta's water boys,

(13:22):
black teenagers who sell ice cold drinks to motorists. We
also see it in the ongoing eviction and housing crisis,
the lack of resources in the midst of a pandemic,
the continued cycling of homeless people through the prison system
instead of providing humane housing, the squashing of anti state
protests but allowance of white supremacists and anti vax protests.

(13:46):
All these highlight the further need for this history to
be told by the people it affects, rather than the
institutions responsible, which are already seeking to take hold and
control the narratives rounding this piece of land and their
own history. The Police Foundation has announced its intention to

(14:06):
build separate museums on the site, dedicated to police officers, firefighters,
and the labor prison that was once located there. The
museum idea has been framed as a concession to last
year's anti cops city call in campaigns, a concession that
will result in land being paved over and as sanitized,

(14:29):
police approved history to be built over top the offending
institutions like the Atlanta Police Department, the Atlanta Police Foundation,
City Council in the Mary's Office, and the media organizations
which support them try to pay lip service to the
atrocities of the past as quickly as possible while retaining
all the power and then bulldozing over the forgotten history

(14:53):
as well discuss vague gestures towards the harms of the
past without material accountabil for the harm done have been
used throughout the prison Farm's history to justify continued control
of physical and narrative space and is simply vapid virtue signaling. Now,
before we deep dive into the prison farm itself as

(15:17):
a part of the intent to place the history in
its full living context, it's necessary to state the land
the prison farm was built on was a thriving trade
hub for Native Americans throughout the continent. Every story that
takes place in quote unquote America has grown from genocide, colonialism,

(15:38):
broken treaties, and the division of interconnected land into individual
parcels for ownership. This is part of the history and
needs to be reckoned with and fully reconciled before anyone
can truly be free. That extensive history is outside the
scope of this episode, but we are trying to get
such topics discussed on this platform arm with more qualified people.

(16:02):
The most frequently cited history about this piece of land
is a historical analysis of the Atlanta Prison Farm by
Jillian Wootton of the City Planning Department, written in nine
In it, we are told that the Key Road property
was purchased in nineteen eighteen by the Bureau of Prisons

(16:22):
and the United States federal government. It was called the
Honor Farm, and federal prisoners grew crops and raised livestock
to feed the population of the nearby Federal Penitentiary. The
piece claims that the site operated until nineteen sixty five,
when it was then purchased by the Atlanta City government

(16:43):
and shut down soon after, at which point the history
becomes murky, as a single report of a labor strike
on the land seems to contradict claims of the nineteen
sixties closing. If you just google Old Lana Prison Bar,
there's two things that are going to come up. There's

(17:04):
a campaign called Save the Old Atlanta Prison Farm, and
this website tells you the story of how in the
early to mid twentieth century, the federal government operated a
prison farm in Atlanta, and then sometime in the fifties,
the city of Atlanta took it over. And it links

(17:24):
to a document written in by a person named Gillian Luton,
who I think was probably doing the best she could
in given the difficulties we had in researching this. And
what this commonly cited history, the Save the Oldlanta Prison
Farm campaign and this more official report written by Jillian

(17:45):
Luton tell you is again that sometime in the fifties
the city bought this prison farm territory. We found nothing
to support that. If our initial question was where the
graves where the body is buried, the question we ended
up asking was, well, when did the city take over
the prison farm from the federal government, and we kept

(18:07):
going back and back and back further into historical record
until we eventually got to around nineteen eleven, when the
city itself bought the property that would become Cops City
and operated their own prison farm. And long story short,
the conclusion we came to was the federal prison farm

(18:29):
was a completely separate property, a completely separate prison system.
And sometimes even though this prison farm really only shut
down sometime around the early nineteen nineties, and the course
of just a few decades, we've forgotten the story of
the people who were incarcerated there and the story of

(18:49):
the prison farm to the point where we don't even
understand that it was its own thing, which is it's
It just makes me angry, like every abuse possible you
can imagine happened at the prison farm and we can't
even we've just completed it with another prison. Horrible, horrible
things happened. Like that's how poor custodians have been of

(19:12):
this history. A lot of people don't know that there
were actually three prison farms running all in Atlanta essentially
once technically technically two of them are in decap Um.
There was the U S Prison Farm Number one federally run.
That's the one that most people know now as an
apartment complex. Uh sorry, I don't remember it off the

(19:35):
top of my head. Then there's number two, which is
what people know as the quote unquote on our farm
near Panthersville. Then we have the City of Atlanta prison Farm.
So there are three running at the exact same time,
all with that a fairly short distance from each other.

(19:57):
This isn't something that was unique to Georgia by any means,
but the history of it is largely ignored. Convict least
labor was incredibly common. The Our Cave Atlanta Sorry, did
a podcast specifically on the convict least labor that was

(20:19):
done to build the Atlanta streets. Basically every street in
Atlanta was built by convict least labor, and a lot
of that labor came from the Atlanta Prison Farm as
well as some of the other prison farms around. There's
also the Chattahoochee Brickworks Company that was recently turned into

(20:40):
a public park, and it was historically acknowledged by our mayor,
Mayor Dickens for its horrific atrocities of slave labor or
building or creating these bricks at the company um where
many people died. So there's just this hypocrisy of hey,

(21:02):
we're using slave labor at this location and it is horrific,
and we are going to acknowledge that, and we are
going to put a plaque out there and do a
ribbon cutting ceremony and truly acknowledge this atrocity. Whereas here,
because they want the land, they're just going to cover

(21:24):
it up and oh, hey, our acknowledgement from this is
we're going to utilize some marble library stones in our
capaganda entrance to the horse bearings. That's pretty much what
they're going to do. The Atlantic Community Press research found
that the Wooton History Report actually conflates three different properties.

(21:47):
Property number one a prison farm on the property of
the Federal Penitentiary where the penitentiary still exists today. Another
property number two was a second prison farm on Panthersville
that was purchased from farmers in nineteen twenty and was
used to supplement the production of the first Federal prison farm.

(22:08):
But the third property, and the one that we're focused
on here today, is the one on Key Road in
unincorporated Decab County. This one was only ever owned and
operated by the city government and was used to produce
food for city prisons. It operated from up until the

(22:28):
early nineties before shutting down and being abandoned and then
used as a dumping ground for the city until now
where they have plans to turn it into a militarized
police training facility. After serving as a slave plantation, the
Key Road property operated as a municipal dairy farm, but

(22:49):
accusations that the farm was losing the city money, coupled
with the ongoing scandals at the city jail stockade in Glenwood,
opened up debates within the city government ranging from nineteen
fifteen to nineteen twenty, about closing the old stockade and
moving prisoners to the municipal dairy farm. The stockade was
overcrowded and unprofitable, and expanding it would cost the city

(23:13):
too much money. Meanwhile, the area it was in was
developing quickly and quote filling up with small property owners
and the presence of the stock aide is an hindrance
to further development unquote. They proposed building a park, or
a golf course, or school or all three on the
land to cater to new residents. Meanwhile, the Superintendent of Prisons, T. B. Langford,

(23:39):
who had also inexplicably be put in control of the
municipal dairy in nineteen eighteen, was the subject of a
nineteen twenty Atlantic Constitution piece that examined Atlanta Humane Society
claims of women's stockade prisoners being tied to a chair
known as the bucking chair and with a strap for disobedience.

(24:03):
He at first denied these claims, saying that white women
at the stock aid were never whipped to his knowledge
and quote Negro women only seldom so unquote. An investigation
apparently disproved this, and he was ordered to stop the
corporal punishment, which he argued was both good and necessary,

(24:27):
and should not be stopped because changing the course would
be an admission of having done something wrong. He argued
that workshy prisoners would need to be motivated somehow, so
by the end of January nineteen twenty, Atlantic City Council
passed a law banning whippings and offering a new form

(24:49):
of punishment instead, quote solitary confinement on a diet of
bread and water unquote. Complaints of the stock aide losing
money continue nude into April nine and T. B. Langford
suggested moving the whole operation to the dairy farm, which
he also controlled. Conveniently, prohibition had started earlier that year,

(25:13):
so it was suggested that the city couldn't save a
lot of money by making a new influx of prisoners
work this city dairy. Moving prisoners to the dairy farm
had one problem. It was not legal to build prison
facilities on land outside city limits, and the Key Road
property was located in unincorporated De Capp County despite being

(25:34):
owned by the City of Atlanta. This problem was easily
solved by city council, who simply passed a bill making
it legal to build city prison facilities on land outside
the city, even outside of Fulton County. By November, the
proposal to close this cockade and move the prisoners to
the dairy farm was agreed upon, and from that point forward,

(25:57):
the Key Road Municipal Dairy Farm became the Atlanta City
Prison and Dairy Farm, later simplified to the Atlantic City
Prison Farm. Council members were being praised for bringing in
the quote largest number of prisoners at any one time
in the past ten years, saving the city twenty dollars

(26:20):
a day on the cost of feeding prisoners and increasing
dairy production by two hundred and fifty gallons a week unquote.
It was seen as a win win win for the
new property owners, city government, and police, but it was
a huge loss for the most vulnerable citizens of the
city and for the residents of the surrounding Decab County

(26:42):
area who had no way of consenting to this deal,
just like how modern day Decab County residents have no
say whatsoever in Atlanta's goals of building a militarized police
training compound with a gun range and explosives testing section
in what would formerly be there forested backyard, I mean

(27:03):
building cops city. Here is just a continuation of the
violence that has been done to this land since the
earliest since time and memorial like this was. This was
first of all, this was stolen Muskogee land. Then it
was a plantation. Then it was a prison farm, which
is just an extension of being a plantation. When it

(27:25):
stopped being a prison farm and just started being mostly
a prison, horrible horrible things were done to people and
the solitary confinement cells. This mostly happened in the eighties.
Then we the prison and the farming stopped. It just
became a commercial dumping ground in an area of the
city that already has some of the worst water quality

(27:48):
and air quality standards in the whole metro area. UM,
the South River Forest Coalition and the South River Watershed
Alliance are the best sources for that. UM. But this
was stolen land from the at the start, the start,
the story was stolen land. And then ok, I guess
the last historical record is social and environmental injustice. And

(28:13):
now you want to give it to the police in
this day and age, I guess you could say, like
it's just compounding violence upon violence upon violence. Okay, now

(28:33):
it's time for the update that I promised on the
Week of Action that recently took place in Atlanta. So
near the end of this past July, from the there
was another week of Action as a part of the
movement to defend the Atlanta Forest and stop cop City.

(28:54):
Before things even kicked off, Ryan Millsap of Black Hole
Movie Studios, just days before the July Week of Action,
put up concrete barricades around the section of forest that
currently operates as a public park that protests had previously
gathered in. He later made an appearance alongside some bulldozers

(29:16):
in Entrenchment Creek Park where then said bulldozers seemingly accidentally
question Mark damaged a park gazebo. So great work, Ryan.
We just wrapped up our week of action. Obviously, we
did a whole bunch of really awesome events, UM writer's workshops,
we had multiple music festivals, daily A meetings, medic trainings,

(29:41):
we did an arcan training and distribution daily meals. I personally,
UM had the fortune to attend to talk by John
Lash who was incarcerated at what is now called Metro
Reentry Center, but at the time was called Metro State Prison,
which just across the street UM from the south end

(30:02):
of the child prison that's on the south end of
the prison farm property. This was the most well attended
week of action there has been so far, especially on
the first Saturday with the first music festival, like as
some as folks were leaving, like people not at all
affiliated with the forest movement beforehand, or like heard about

(30:24):
the music like the school music festival in the woods.
They were brought in by the music festival, But then
we were able to educate them on the fight to
defend this forest in their neighborhood, which is like that
is the goal. That was an amazing experience. There were
three different instances of arrests during this most recent week

(30:44):
of action. On July, in Cobb County, on the north
end of the Metro Atlanta area, four people were arrested
at a noise demo outside of a contractor's residence. Police
scanner audio has cops discussed thing charges for the people
who were standing outside on public property to include criminal trespass,

(31:06):
and also discussed was quote with the eco terrorists happening
in the county, possible domestic terrorist charges unquote, it will
be a criminal trespasses that will be wrong with the
eco terrorists and happened in the county. Domestic terrorism as well,

(31:28):
possible domestic terrorism as well. It will be negative onomestic terrorism.
That last cop they're called a negative on domestic terrorism.
This was not the first instance of law enforcement referring
to defend the Atlanta Forest protesters as eco terrorists. On July,

(31:51):
six people were arrested near the ruins of the old
prison Farm for criminal trespassing, seemingly just for hanging out
in the prison Farm area, which has been a well
known urban exploration hangout spot for decades. These people were
just taken to jail for being there. In the bail hearing,

(32:13):
the judge said that he didn't even know why they
got arrested. They were soon released with signature bonds for
all and then on Friday, July seven, people were arrested
at a noise demo at a brass Field and Gory
construction site. Currently, Brassfield and Gory is the lead contractor
for the Cops City project. The site was on Georgia

(32:36):
State University property. The Atlanta Police Department responded as well.
Unicorn riot footage shows people making a loop through the
building and chanting before a construction worker aggressively shoves one
protester out of the doorway. Here's some police scanner audio
Unit three. They're saying that no one's in the building

(32:56):
now protest wise, but they were inside the building, so
they all need to be ide. Can you advise on
a number frost with me fifteen O seven ahead. If
you still got eyes on the people walking away, can
you snap some pictures. I'm on the way up there
in case they're calmed before mirror inside the building. So

(33:20):
I mean that's that's around for ct so we can
stop just taking pictures you and the three. That's affirmative,
but we can stop into saying please coffee APT Homeland
and Zone three is in a route to provide support
of that location. Coming up on the location now. Atlanta
police stated that no property damage was done beyond a

(33:41):
bucket being kicked, and yet seven people are facing a
slate of felony charges. Yeah, the major says homelands en route.
So no property destruction, nobody assaulted, nothing, that was the problem.
They walked back in dead, Thank you, sir. One person

(34:03):
was hospitalized due to broken ribs sustained during their arrest.
For the first nine hours after the arrests, police refused
to give jail support, the location or contact info for
where the arrestees were being sent. The following Tuesday night,
everyone was finally released on posted bond and with that

(34:25):
that wraps up part one of the three part series
for the history of the Old Atlanta prison Farm. Before
I close out, I do want to plug the Atlanta
Solidarity Fund at a t L solidarity dot org that
helps protesters with bail and legal stuff, So donate to
that if you have the means. Also in the description,

(34:49):
I'm going to leave that link. Also the link for
the Atlantic Community Press History report that they published last
year that will also be in the disc option below.
Thanks for listening. Check out Atlantic Community Press on Twitter
or the website. See you on the other side. It

(35:12):
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