Download or read book Eleven Days in Hell written by William T. Harper and published by University of North Texas Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 361 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Annotation "The 1974 Fred Gomez Carrasco prison siege at Huntsville, TX.".
Download or read book One Dies Get Another written by Matthew J. Mancini and published by Univ of South Carolina Press. This book was released on 2022-10-19 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A chronicle one of the harshest, most exploitative labor systems in American history In his seminal study of convict leasing in the post-Civil War South, Matthew J. Mancini chronicles one of the harshest, most exploitative labor systems in American history. Devastated by war, bewildered by peace, and unprepared to confront the problems of prison management, Southern states sought to alleviate the need for cheap labor, a perceived rise in criminal behavior, and the bankruptcy of their state treasuries. Mancini describes the policy of leasing prisoners to individuals and corporations as one that, in addition to reducing prison populations and generating revenues, offered a means of racial subordination and labor discipline. He identifies commonalities that, despite the seemingly uneven enforcement of convict leasing across state lines, bound the South together for more than half a century in reliance on an institution of almost unrelieved brutality. He describes the prisoners' daily existence, profiles the individuals who leased convicts, and reveals both the inhumanity of the leasing laws and the centrality of race relations in the establishment and perpetuation of convict leasing. In considering the longevity of the practice, Mancini takes issue with the widespread notion that convict leasing was an aberration in a generally progressive history of criminal justice. In explaining its dramatic demise, Mancini contends that moral opposition was a distinctly minor force in the abolition of the practice and that only a combination of rising lease prices and years of economic decline forced an end to convict leasing in the South.
Download or read book Texas Tough written by Robert Perkinson and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2010-03-11 with total page 494 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vivid history of America's biggest, baddest prison system and how it came to lead the nation's punitive revolution In the prison business, all roads lead to Texas. The most locked-down state in the nation has led the way in criminal justice severity, from assembly-line executions to isolation supermaxes, from prison privatization to sentencing juveniles as adults. Texas Tough, a sweeping history of American imprisonment from the days of slavery to the present, shows how a plantation-based penal system once dismissed as barbaric became the national template. Drawing on convict accounts, official records, and interviews with prisoners, guards, and lawmakers, historian Robert Perkinson reveals the Southern roots of our present-day prison colossus. While conventional histories emphasize the North's rehabilitative approach, he shows how the retributive and profit-driven regime of the South ultimately triumphed. Most provocatively, he argues that just as convict leasing and segregation emerged in response to Reconstruction, so today's mass incarceration, with its vast racial disparities, must be seen as a backlash against civil rights. Illuminating for the first time the origins of America's prison juggernaut, Texas Tough points toward a more just and humane future.
Download or read book Follow Me to Hell written by Tom Clavin and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2023-04-04 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Tom Clavin's Follow Me to Hell is the explosive true story of how legendary Ranger Leander McNelly and his men brought justice to a lawless Texan frontier. In turbulent 1870s Texas, the revered and fearless Ranger Leander McNelly led his men in one dramatic campaign after another, apprehending cattle thieves, desperadoes, border ruffians, and other dangerous criminals and throwing them in jail or, if that's how they wanted it, six feet under. They would stop at nothing in pursuit of justice, even sending twenty-six Rangers across the border to retrieve stolen cattle—taking on hundreds of Mexican troops with nothing but their Sharps rifles and six-guns. The nation came to call them “McNelly’s Rangers.” Set against the backdrop of 200 years of thrilling Texas Rangers history, this page-turner details the tough life along the Texas border that was tamed by a courageous, yet doomed, captain and his team of fearless men. New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin takes readers deep into the heart of Texas and beyond in this thrilling true account of some of the most legendary frontier lawmen of all time.
Download or read book Portals to Hell written by Lonnie R. Speer and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 468 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The holding of prisoners of war has always been both a political and a military enterprise, yet the military prisons of the Civil War, which held more than four hundred thousand soldiers and caused the deaths of fifty-six thousand men, have been nearly forgotten. Now Lonnie R. Speer has brought to life the least-known men in the great struggle between the Union and the Confederacy, using their own words and observations as they endured a true ?hell on earth.? Drawing on scores of previously unpublished firsthand accounts, Portals to Hell presents the prisoners? experiences in great detail and from an impartial perspective. The first comprehensive study of all major prisons of both the North and the South, this chronicle analyzes the many complexities of the relationships among prisoners, guards, commandants, and government leaders.
Download or read book Hell Paso written by Samuel K. Dolan and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-24 with total page 457 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Spanning a thirty-year period, from the late 1800s until the 1920s, Hell Paso is the true story of the desperate men and notorious women that made El Paso, Texas the Old West’s most dangerous town. Supported by official court documents, government records, oral histories and period newspaper accounts, this book offers a bird’s eye view of the one-time “murder metropolis” of the Southwest.
Download or read book Texas Gulag written by Gary Brown and published by Taylor Trade Publishing. This book was released on 2002-02-22 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For fifty years prison inmates in Texas were leased out to railroads, coal mines, farm plantations, and sawmill crews with terrible incidences of brutality, cruelty, injury, and death to the prisoners. They were forced to produce daily work quotas of seven tons of coal, three hundred pounds of cotton, or one and one-half cords of wood. They were fed spoiled hog meat and slept on mattresses filled with bugs and filthy from sweat, blood, and dirt. They were punished by brutal whippings with an instrument known as the "bat" and by various other methods. Self-mutilation by cutting off fingers, hands, and feet and even self-blinding were commonplace to avoid working in these lease camps. It was a period in which the state prison system was shrouded in secrecy. Former prisoners had only one option available to try to inform the public about the brutality and corruption. They could write their personal memoirs. And an amazing number of them did—dating back to the 1870s. Herein are some of their stories.
Download or read book Bound in Silence written by Christena Stephens and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2024-02-26 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: On a nearly moonless night in October 1943, a single gunshot rang out in Littlefield, Texas. A prominent Texas doctor and his wife were found bound, shot, beaten, and murdered. The only witness: their five-year-old daughter, who was bound to silence and refused to speak about what happened for 70 years. The heinous crime remains unsolved. For years, the courts tried to convict one suspect, but forensic evidence contradicted the prosecution’s case. Investigators, including the famed Texas Rangers, failed to bring anyone to justice. Eight decades later, the questions linger over the plains of the Texas Panhandle: who killed the Hunts and why? Author and historian Christena Stephens spent more than a decade researching the Hunt murders, re-examining every twist and turn in the legal process, uncovering new evidence, and drawing new conclusions about who might have been responsible. She also convinced Jo Ann Hunt to break 70 years of silence and tell her story for the first time. Armed with Jo Ann’s account, Stephens takes the reader back to that deadly night and through the years of trauma that followed. Why did the criminal justice system repeatedly fail to bring anyone to justice? What could have scared a 5-year-old girl into a lifetime of silence? What did investigators miss? And most importantly, who killed Roy and Mae Hunt? Bound in Silence is a true crime tour-de-force, a meticulously researched, impeccably told tale of unsolved murder on the High Plains.
Download or read book The Pegoda Family in America written by Kevin P. Thompson and published by Kevin P. Thompson. This book was released on 2015-01-10 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book documents three generations of descendants of John Pegoda, Sr., an immigrant from Ruda, Prussia to Walker County, Texas in 1851.
Download or read book Within These Walls written by Rev. Carroll Pickett and published by Crossroad Press. This book was released on 2017-02-27 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FORMER TEXAS PRISON CHAPLAIN REV. CARROLL PICKETT, WORKING WITH TWO-TIME EDGAR AWARD WINNER AND NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR CARLTON STOWERS, PROVIDES THIS ELOQUENT, UNFLINCHING LOOK AT CAPITAL PUNISHMENT. Within These Walls is the powerful memoir of Rev. Carroll Pickett, who spent fifteen years as the death house chaplain at “The Walls,” the Huntsville unit of the Texas prison system. In that capacity, Reverend Pickett ministered to ninety-five men before they were put to death by lethal injection. They came with sinister nicknames like “The Candy Man” and “The Good Samaritan Killer,” some contrite, some angry—a few who might even have been innocent. All of them found in Reverend Pickett their last chance for an unbiased confessor who would look at them only as fellow humans, not simply as the convicted criminals the rest of society had already dismissed them as. This firsthand experience gave Reverend Pickett the unique insight needed to write an impassioned statement on the realities of capital punishment in America. The result is a thought-provoking and compelling book that takes the reader inside the criminal mind, inside the execution chamber, and inside the heart of a remarkable man who shares his thoughts and observations not only about capital punishment, but about the dark world of prison society
Download or read book Chasing Away the Devil written by Susan Rogers Cooper and published by Speaking Volumes. This book was released on with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With a voice that's as comforting as a rocking chair and as salty as a fisherman" (Houston Chronicle, of Houston in the Rearview Mirror), Deputy Sheriff Milton Kovak of Prophesy County, Oklahoma, returns. Milt finally gets up the nerve to ask his longtime ladylove, Glenda Sue Rainey, to marry him—only to be rebuffed with no explanation and a good-bye at the door. When Glenda Sue is found dead the next day, brutally murdered, Milt is dazed. Enter Glenda Sue's long-lost daughter, who arrives in town for the funeral with her own little girl in tow. The only problem: little Rebecca is half-black, and the residents of Prophesy County aren't all as open-minded as Milt. As the threat of more violence looms, Milt begins to have strange dreams about Rebecca's safety, dreams whose common feature is the presence of a woman with leg braces. These dreams lead him to Dr. Jean McDonnell, a handicapped psychiatrist, whom Milt enlists to help him find out what happened to Glenda Sue—and why. When sister Jewel Ann announces plans to move herself and her family out of Milt's house and into the home of Harmon Monk, Milt begins to see Dr. McDonnell as having a role to play in his personal life as well.
Download or read book The Sergeants Major of the Army 2003 Paperback written by Daniel K. Elder and published by Department of the Army. This book was released on 2003-07 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: CMH Pub. 70-63-1. By Daniel K. Elder, et al. Describes the origin and growth of the Office of the Sergeant Major of the Army. Includes biographies of each of the Sergeants Major of the Army
Download or read book The Fall of 1972 A Season for the Perfect Storm written by Dr. Randy White and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2014 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About sixty miles north of Houston on Interstate 45, a giant statue soars above the piney woods of East Texas. It's a white concrete image of General Sam Houston, the first and third president of the Republic of Texas. Like everything in this state, it is oversized, and at seventy feet tall, it's the largest statue of an American hero in the country. The statue welcomes the traveler to Huntsville a small sleepy college town that was the home of Sam Houston, and which now is the home of Sam Houston State University (SHSU) and another Texas icon, the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC). On one side of its wall, convicts struggle with the rigors of prison life, and on the other at the university, another group of youths struggle with the demands of college. The contrast between the two serves as a metaphor for modern American life. This story is seen from the point of view of a man who experienced events on both sides of the prison wall. On one side of the wall, Randy White was a guard known as Boss White to the inmates. On the other side was Randy White, a college student in 1972 and the Bearkats' (the SHSU basketball team) official statistician. He was part of the story when the Bearkats became a basketball legend in the early seventies. Football is the renowned culture of Texas. If one has any doubts, then look at the Dallas Cowboys and the popularity of its cheerleading. Now there are cheerleading squads in the NFL as well as on the college football scene. There is nothing new or unique about that. But none are as famous as the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. To make the squad and wear the white short shorts and blue-and-white bolero jackets today is more prestigious than making the Radio City Music Hall Rockettes back in the forties. Such is the stature of football in Texas. So Texas is definitely football country. Basketball lives in the outskirts, something to be played in between football seasons. Sam Houston State University's basketball team had been lackluster for forty years. Nobody expected much from SHSU basketball in 1972. Until the early seventies, back when a bunch of basketball players, intent on winning, burst on the scene like a perfect storm. Such as the one that brewed up one October day off New England, and it came out of nowhere. A confluence of different weather-related phenomena had combined to produce what was termed a perfect storm. That same perfect storm hit Huntsville. It was as if someone had put into a cauldron a unique combination of talent, coaching, spirit, camaraderie, and a new social awareness and mixed them up and out came a dream team, a dream season, a perfect storm. This is the story of that perfect storm, that dream season.
Download or read book Information Bulletin written by and published by . This book was released on 2001 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Sergeants Major of the Army written by and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Texas Plays written by William Bizzell Martin and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Collects plays by native Texans and by life-long residents of the Lone Star State, including Ramsey Yelvington, R.G. Vliet, Mary Rohde, and others.
Download or read book Gangster Tour of Texas written by T. Lindsay Baker and published by Texas A&M University Press. This book was released on 2011-08-31 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bonnie and Clyde, Machine Gun Kelly, the Newton Boys, the Santa Claus Bank Robbers. . . . During the era of gangsters and organized crime, Texas hosted its fair share of guns and gambling, moonshine and morphine, ransom and robbery. The state’s crime wave hit such a level that in 1927 the Texas Bankers Association offered a reward of $5,000 for a dead bank robber; no reward was given for one captured alive. Veteran historian T. Lindsay Baker brings his considerable sleuthing skills to the dark side, leading readers on a fascinating tour of the most interesting and best preserved crime scenes in the Lone Star State. Gangster Tour of Texas traces a trail of crime that had its beginnings in 1918, when the Texas legislature outlawed alcohol, and persisted until 1957, when Texas Rangers closed down the infamous casinos of Galveston. Baker presents detailed maps, photographs of criminals, victims, and law officers, and pictures of the crime scenes as they appear today. Steeped in solid historical research, including personal visits by the author to every site described in the book, this volume offers entertaining and informative insights into a particularly lawless period in our nation’s history. Readers interested in true crime, regional history, or this unique aspect of heritage tourism will derive hours of enjoyment as they follow--on the road or from their armchairs--the trail of both cops and robbers in Gangster Tour of Texas. “Baker knows how to spin a yarn that keeps his readers engrossed; knows that it does history no harm to write it so folks will enjoy many illustrations, maps, and pictures of outlaws, lawmen, victims, witnesses, and crime scenes that accompany each story. Plus, his picture captions are as informative as his story narratives."--Bill Neal, author, Getting Away with Murder on the Texas Frontier
