1st Black Prison Memoir Discovered

A rare-books dealer in upstate New York may have discovered the first recovered African-American prison memoir. Penned by Austin Reed in 1858, the piece of writing offers grisly details surrounding the years 1830-1850, when Reed resided at the infamous Auburn State Prison in New York. “Turning my back towards him he threw Sixty seven lashes on me…I was then to stand over the dreain (sic) while one of the inmates wash[ed] my back in a pail of salt brine,” Reed writes. Prohibited from speaking or even facing one another, the prisoners were regularly whipped and beaten. Professors at Yale are now preparing the book for publication.