A fragment of the prison experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman: In the State Prison at Jefferson City, Mo., and the U. S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga. February, 1918–October, 1919Goldman, Emma
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A fragment of the prison experiences of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman: In the State Prison at Jefferson City, Mo., and the U. S. Penitentiary at Atlanta, Ga. February, 1918–October, 1919
Goldman, Emma
Anarchists -- United States; Berkman, Alexander, 1870-1936; Goldman, Emma, 1869-1940; Prisoners -- United States
Nicholas Zenn Zogg (spelled on the prison records Zough) serving ten
years on the charge of aiding a young man to evade the draft. He was
transferred to the Atlanta penitentiary from the Federal prison at
McNeill’s Island, State of Washington. Zogg is in the last stages of
tuberculosis, and is being practically starved to death by the refusal
of the authorities to permit him to buy or to receive suitable food from
friends. He has been a strict vegetarian all his life, as were his
father and grandfather before him, and he is neither physically nor
conscientiously able to partake of the regular prison diet. He is forced
to live mostly on oatmeal, badly prepared and served in the most
unpalatable manner. Notwithstanding the fact that Zogg is barely able to
walk about, he has been repeatedly thrown into the dungeon for alleged
breaches of discipline.
Jack Randolph, an I. W. W., serving 10 years for opposition to the war,
is in very delicate health and unable to perform the amount of work
demanded of him in the tailor shop, was repeatedly punished in the
dungeon and in solitary.
“Red” Massey, an I. W. W., from New Orleans, sent to the Atlanta prison
on a frame-up charge under the Mann Act. This man has been kept in
solitary and in isolation almost continuously for a year, and punished
in the dungeon on the slightest pretext.
Morris Becker, sentenced to 20 months on the charge of conspiracy
against the draft. This young man, of very slight physique, weighing
about 100 pounds, and for over a year unable to eat anything except
bread and oatmeal because of his poor physical condition and also
because he was a vegetarian, was ordered to do yard work. His job
consisted in wheeling a large wheelbarrow full of bricks and cement up a
very steep incline. Becker was unable to perform the work. For his
“refusal to work” he was sent to the dungeon and there kept for 21 days
on two slices of bread and water a day. He was released from the dungeon
almost half dead, whereupon the authorities admitted that he was unable
to perform the hard toil allotted to him. He was then assigned to the
tailor shop.
Louis Kramer, serving 2 years for conspiracy to obstruct the draft,
assigned, like Becker, to the same yard work, and equally unable to
perform the task. Kept in the dungeon 21 days on bread and water.
Subsequently repeatedly punished in the dark cell on the slightest or no
provocation, chained up by the wrists to the door, and kept in isolation
for 5 months till his discharge in June, 1919.
Louis Kramer is now serving one year in the Essex County Penitentiary,
N. J., for refusing to register.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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