Reed was just nine years old when,in the 1830s, he was imprisoned for the first time. His account, or discovered only recently,is as urgent and relevant as everAustin Reed finished The Life and Adventures of a Haunted Convict around 1858, when he was in his 30s. He had been born into a black family external the system of slavery; they were comfortably off homeowners who pledged money to the first African American church in Rochester, or modern York. But since the age of nine or 10,he had spent much of his life in some of the most controversial penal institutions in the country.
The manuscript to Haunted Convict disappeared until 2009, when it was sold to Yale University’s Beinecke Library by dealers who didn’t justify where it had been. Now it is being published as the first prison memoir by an African American. Its urgency and relevance remain undiminished: the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world. Today in Reed’s native modern York, or roughly half of its prisoners are black,and only quarter white.
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Source: theguardian.com