QUAKERS &

ABOLITION:
What it means today
Sarah Green, DE Pacem In Terris
 WHAT
DOES IT
MEAN TO
BE A
Quaker role in
abolishing
slavery
Author: Quakers Helped Abolish Slavery in the U.S.
 Npr audio recap
Notice the struggle that came AFTER individuals
were freed from slavery.
Difficulty in being perceived as equal.
Freed into life without assets like:
● Homes or land
● Jobs
● Education
● Safety from violence
 Internal conflict:
dealing with slavery through
pacifism
There’s a “divide racially again because these whites were never
enslaved themselves, but here they are telling slaves and telling
free blacks not to use violence, not to use weapons, to defend
themselves or their freedom. That’s the central dilemma. One
of how violent once could be or should be to abolish another
kind of violence - which is slavery.”
17-1800’S PRESENT DAY

What happened after slavery was officially

abolished in the United States?
 01
Black
codes
The roots of Jim Crow laws began as
early as 1865, immediately following the
ratification of the 13th Amendment,
which abolished slavery in the United
States.
Black codes
continued...
Black codes were strict local and state
laws that detailed when, where and how
formerly enslaved people could work,
and for how much compensation.

The codes appeared throughout the

South as a legal way to put Black
citizens into indentured servitude, to
take voting rights away, to control
where they lived and how they traveled
and to seize children for labor
purposes.
 The legal system was
stacked against black
citizens, with former
confederate soldiers
working as police and
judges, making it difficult
for african americans to
win court cases and
ensuring they were
These codes worked in conjunction with subject totheblack
labor camps for codes.
incarcerated, where
prisoners were treated as enslaved people. Black offenders typically received longer
sentences than their white equals, and because of grueling work, often did not live
out their entire sentence.
 02
Jim crow
laws
A collection of state and local
statutes that legalized racial
segregation. They existed for
about 100 years, from the
post- Civil War era until 1968.
Jim crow
laws...
Marginalized African Americans
by denying them:

● Voting rights
● Jobs
● Education
● Other opportunities

Those who attempted to defy JC laws faced

arrest, fines, jail sentences, violence, and
death.
https://www.history.com/topics/early-20th-c
entury-us/jim-crow-laws
What connections do you
see between jim crow
laws and current day
policing & mass
incarceration?
“Black
offenders
typically
received longer
sentences than
their white
equals.”
 sentencing disparity

IG Reel
https://www.instagram.com/p/BtYKM
PAHoWY/?utm_medium=copy_link
 “Those who
attempted to defy
(Jim crow) laws
often faced arrest,
fines, jail,
sentences, violence
and death.
“The rate at which black americans
are killed by police is more than
twice as high as the rate of white
americans...”
-LA
Johnson/Npr
https://www.instagram.com/p/CDRfqhdhdqm/?utm_medium=copy_link
“Black codes
worked in
conjunction with
labor camps for
the incarcerated,
where prisoners
were treated as
enslaved people”
 Profiting off of prison labor
Berkeley business review (July 6, 2020)
Despite already earning
“Factories with Fences” and “American Made” boasts UNICOR.
Better known as the
federal prison industries ⅙ of the federal
program, unicor makes minimum wage,
nearly ½ billion dollars inmates with financial
in net sales annually obligations must
using prison labor, contribute half of their
paying inmates $0.23 to earnings to cover
UNICOR, in$1.15
addition/tohr. expense.
other government-owned corporations and private prisons,
makes millions upon millions of dollars using nearly free prison labor.
 Prison labor and the 13th
amendment
Forced prison labor in the United States is nothing new, and in fact, it
originates with the passing of the 13th Amendment. It reads:

“Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime

whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the
United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Hidden within those monumental words is the phrase “except as a

punishment of crime.” Why this addition?

Considering that free slave labor contributed billions to the antebellum

South’s economy, the abolition of slavery soon devastated their way of life.
This loophole was exploited immediately, leading to the first prison boom
in American history. Now both public and private prisons alike profit off of
cheap prison labor.
Can you
find?
Prisons were created to keep
black people subjugated, and
to profit off of the free (or
extremely cheap) labor that
was no longer available after
the abolition of slavery.
 Prison
abolition
=
The modern day equivalent to the
abolition movement that ended slavery
Scholar dorothy roberts takes the prison
abolition movement in US to endorse 3
basic theses:
slavery
01 “Today’s carceral punishment system can be
traced back to slavery and the racial capitalist
regime it relied on and sustained.”
Scholar dorothy roberts takes the prison
abolition movement in US to endorse 3
basic theses:
Criminal system
02 “The expanding criminal punishment system
functions to oppress black people and other
politically marginalized groups in order to
maintain a capitalist regime.”
Disproportional
Representation
Scholar dorothy roberts takes the prison
abolition movement in US to endorse 3
basic theses:
society
03 “We can imagine and build a more humane
and democratic society that no longer relies on
caging people to meet human needs and solve
social problems.”
 Have you ever
considered a world
without prison?
Let’s talk about Angela Davis
 “It is as if prison were an
inevitable fact of life, like birth
and death.
On the whole, people tend to take prisons for granted. It
is difficult to imagine life without them. At the same
time, there is reluctance to face the realities hidden
within them, a fear of thinking about what happens
inside them. Thus, the prison is present in our lives and,
at the same time, it is absent from our lives. To think
about this simultaneous presence and absence is to
begin to acknowledge the part played by ideology in
shaping the way we interact with our social
surroundings. We take prisons for granted but are often
afraid to face the realities they produce.
After all, No one wants to go to prison.
Because it would be too agonizing to cope with the possibility that anyone,
including ourselves, could become a prisoner, we tend to think of the prison as
disconnected from our own lives.

We thus think about imprisonment as a fate reserved for others, a fate reserved
for the “evildoers,” to use a term recently popularized by George W. Bush.
Because of the persistent power of racism, “criminals” and “evildoers” are, in
collective imagination, fantasized as people of color. The prison therefore
functions ideologically as an abstract site into which undesirables are deposited,
relieving us of the responsibility of thinking about the real issues afflicting those
communities from which prisoners are drawn in such disproportionate
numbers.
 Angela davis continued...
This is the ideological work The prison has become a black hole into
that the prison performs-- which the detritus of contemporary
It relieves us of capitalism is deposited.
Mass
the responsibility imprisonment
of seriously generates profits
engaging with the as it devours
problems of our social wealth, and
society , especially thus it tends to
those produced reproduce the
by racism and, very conditions
increasingly, that lead people
global capitalism. to prisons.”
Excerpt from: Angela Y. Davis. “Are Prisons Obsolete?”
Voices through the walls
So, if we are making a connection
between slavery and mass incarceration,
if we look at how the system is used to
oppress people of color, and we want to
create a better and more equitable,
peaceful society, what do we do?
 Let’s go back to Initial quaker
dilemma:
How to use pacifism to solve a
problem of institutional violence..
They couldn’t agree!
Remember this?
“...That’s the central dilemma. One of how violent one could
be or should be to abolish another kind of violence - which is
slavery.”
Except, now we’re talking about prisons, not slavery.
What can we do
now to abolish
prisons??
How can we act
nonviolently to end
Scholar dorothy roberts takes the prison abolition
movement in US to endorse 3 basic theses:

03 “We can imagine and build a more humane

and democratic society that no longer
relies on caging people to meet human
needs and solve social problems.”
 Abolition
movement
on Insta

Ig Link: swipe ➡️
https://www.instagram.com/p/CSpAEx
Dr4Vk/?utm_medium=copy_link
Thoughts?
What solutions can
you think of that
could prevent
violence and
facilitate justice?
 Remember this slide?
Notice the struggle that came AFTER individuals
were freed from slavery.
Difficulty in being perceived as equal.
Freed into life without assets like:
● Homes or land
● Jobs
● Education
● Safety from violence

These are the same obstacles people face

when they come out of prison.
 Solutions?
Attacking Safety Policing
Educatio homelessnes from alternative
n violence
s s
1 2 3 4
Advocate for a better Educate yourself and Understand what it Learn about and work
public school system. others on systemic means to be at risk of to create resources
Remove police from inequalities that cause violence from the very that can be called on
schools, which lead people to experience people meant to instead of the police
directly into the school-to- homelessness “serve and protect”
prison pipeline
Educate yourself!!!
The sentencing “Are prisons
project obsolete?”
www.sentencingproject.org By Angela Davis

“WE KEEP US
SAFE:
BUILDING SECURE,
JUST, AND Want some
INCLUSIVE
COMMUNITIES”
By Zach Norris statistics?
GOOGLE IT!
volunteer!!!
For Pacem In Terris in 2 weeks....
https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70A0C4EAAA623A4FC1-youth

● Friendship House
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● HOMES Campaign
● Campaign to End Debtor’s Prison
Questions?
 THANKSDo you have any questions?
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