This art icle was downloaded by: [ Universit y of Chicago Library] On: 27 July 2013, At : 12: 10 Publisher: Taylor & Francis I nform a Lt d Regist ered in England and Wales Regist ered Num ber: 1072954 Regist ered office: Mort im er House, 37- 41 Mort im er St reet , London W1T 3JH, UK Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society Publicat ion det ails, including inst ruct ions for aut hors and subscript ion informat ion: ht t p:/ / www.t andfonline.com/ loi/ usou20 “ … For Strictly Religious Reason[s]” Toussaint Losier Published online: 24 Jul 2013. To cite this article: Toussaint Losier (2013) “ … For St rict ly Religious Reason[s]” , Souls: A Crit ical Journal of Black Polit ics, Cult ure, and Societ y, 15:1-2, 19-38, DOI: 10.1080/ 10999949.2013.803839 To link to this article: ht t p:/ / dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/ 10999949.2013.803839 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTI CLE Taylor & Francis m akes every effort t o ensure t he accuracy of all t he inform at ion ( t he “ Cont ent ” ) cont ained in t he publicat ions on our plat form . However, Taylor & Francis, our agent s, and our licensors m ake no represent at ions or warrant ies what soever as t o t he accuracy, com plet eness, or suit abilit y for any purpose of t he Cont ent . Any opinions and views expressed in t his publicat ion are t he opinions and views of t he aut hors, and are not t he views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of t he Cont ent should not be relied upon and should be independent ly verified wit h prim ary sources of inform at ion. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable for any losses, act ions, claim s, proceedings, dem ands, cost s, expenses, dam ages, and ot her liabilit ies what soever or howsoever caused arising direct ly or indirect ly in connect ion wit h, in relat ion t o or arising out of t he use of t he Cont ent . This art icle m ay be used for research, t eaching, and privat e st udy purposes. Any subst ant ial or syst em at ic reproduct ion, redist ribut ion, reselling, loan, sub- licensing, syst em at ic supply, or dist ribut ion in any form t o anyone is expressly forbidden. Term s & Condit ions of access and use can be found at ht t p: / / www.t andfonline.com / page/ t erm sand- condit ions Souls Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ‘‘ . . . For Strictly Religious Reason[s]’’ Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Cooper v. Pate and the Origins of the Prisoners’ Rights Movement Toussaint Losier In 1957, Thomas X. Cooper, a Chicago native and former Roman Catholic, wrote to Elijah Muhammad to be registered as a member of the Lost-Found Nation of Islam (NOI). Like tens of thousands of other African Americans during the 1950s, he looked to the NOI as an answer to both social and spiritual questions. But unlike other NOI converts, Cooper was prisoner no. 33527, serving a 100-year homicide sentence at Illinois’ infamous Stateville penitentiary, an institution whose administrative rules classified the NOI as a hate group and hindered its operation. This article uses Cooper’s decade-long combination of legal and extra-legal efforts to gain administrative recognition for he and other ‘‘Black Muslims’’ as a window into the emergence of a nationwide prisoners’ rights movement. By adapting his suit to fit a Cold War civil rights framework, Cooper was able to bring his suit all the way to the Supreme Court, thereby prompting a precedent-setting decision regarding the courts’ recognition of prisoner’s constitutional rights. Although situated squarely within the NOI’s millennial eschatology, Cooper’s protracted campaign to the challenge Stateville’s prison conditions reflect the development of a prisoner’s civil rights movement, growing within the shadows of a Jim Crow civil society. Keywords: Black muslims, civil rights, mass incarceration, Nation of Islam, prisoners’ rights It would be impossible for me to stress too strongly the importance of the [Cooper] case to the penitentiary system. There is absolutely no question but that the Black Muslims are dedicated to destroying discipline and authority in the prison system. Any concession is a step towards chaos.1 —Illinois Director of Public Safety Joseph E. Ragen to U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, May 7, 1964 Souls 15 (1–2): 19–38, 2013 / Copyright # 2013 University of Illinois at Chicago / 1099-9949/02 / DOI: 10.1080/10999949.2013.803839 20 ^ Souls January^June 2013 Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Introduction: From Religious Freedom to Prisoners’ Rights On July 3, 1964, at least four prisoners in the Segregation unit of the Illinois State Penitentiary, better known a ‘‘Stateville,’’ rioted. Set in a special wing of the prison, the Segregation cells confined incorrigible prisoners to an individual cell almost continuously, with restricted or limited privileges, like being released from one’s cell for a five to ten minute shower only once a week. According to official reports, the July 3 disturbance was provoked by a ‘‘Muslim gang, stirring up the Segregation Unit,’’ first by shouting obscenities at the prison doctor, and then throwing water on the Sergeant who came to their cells. When guards responded by ordering inmates out of their cells to be transferred to even harsher conditions in the Isolation Unit, they found that inmate Hobson Norris, 33, ‘‘had pieces of glass in his hands, shaped like daggers, with rags wrapped around their back parts so they would not cut his hands.’’ Somehow, Norris, serving a life sentence for murder, had broken the light fixture above his cell door on the Lower East gallery floor and was using shards of its to challenge the guards. In addition, to Norris, at least three other prisoners in other parts of the Segregation Unit had armed themselves with glass shards and wet rags while yelling and rattling their cell doors. One inmate, Gerald Chapman, 25, even set his Upper East Gallery cell on fire by placing his mattress, clothing, and personal papers by his door.2 In interviews that evening with New York Times and Chicago Tribune reporters, Stateville Warden, Frank J. Pate, who Lieutenant guards had called to the Segregation Unit during the midst of the riot and had overseen its suppression, made no mention of the following: after being treated for a head injury sustained during the physical extraction from his cell, Norris explained that his actions were prompted by the doctor’s repeated denial of his requests for vitamins and whole milk to address his failing health. Nor did Pate mention that during the course of the riot, one prisoner, Thomas X. Cooper, reportedly an ‘‘advisor to the other inmates,’’ had helped to quell the disturbance, shouting from his own cells for his fellow prisoners to give up their weapons and leave their cells voluntarily when the warden’s own orders failed to do so.3 Indeed, just several days earlier, Cooper and five other Muslims in Segregation had presented guards with the first written inmate demands in the penitentiary’s history, a list that called for changes in administrative policy like the access to Kosher meals and the Holy Qu’ran, use of the chapel for Islamic services with a minister from Muhammad’s Mosque No. 2, and an end to the ‘‘suppression, and ‘Genocide’ oppression of the Islamic religion.’’4 Instead, Pate contended that the riot had been prompted by Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 21 the recent United States Supreme Court’s decision in Cooper v. Pate, a civil rights suit filed by inmate Cooper from his cell in Segregation that alleged that Pate and other prison officials had unconstitutionally denied him his right to practice his religion as a convert to the Nation of Islam. Although the justices did not make a ruling on the merits of the case, they did determine that Cooper’s claims deserved a hearing in federal court based on the merits of the case. This was a bold and unprecedented extension of federal judicial oversight into the operations of state prisons.5 Drawing on material from this landmark lawsuit, this article contends that Cooper’s case offers a unique insight into the process of civil litigation and collective action that laid the foundation for the Prisoner’s Rights movement of the 1960s as well as the terms upon which that movement would be reversed during the 1970s. Scholars have repeatedly called attention to the importance of Nation of Islam converts, often referred to as ‘‘Black Muslims,’’ in the development of prisoners’ rights. As political scientist Marie Gottschalk contends, ‘‘Black Muslims were the catalyst for a string of court decisions that gave prisoners important and unprecedented protections and rights behind bars.’’6 As Cooper’s case demonstrates, the legal possibility for this shift in court jurisdiction was grounded in the dilemma that the ‘‘oppression of the Islamic religion’’ posed to U.S. constitutional law. Although their petitions were repeatedly dismissed as grounded in racist and fanatical beliefs by the courts, the focus of Nation of Islam (NOI) converts on matters of religious freedom was ultimately successful because the legal system, as legal scholar Oliver Jones argues, has ‘‘historically [been] an environment that has considered freedom of religion the essence of a scheme of ordered liberties, that is, a fundamental right.’’7 As this article will demonstrate, the Supreme Court decision in Cooper played a key role in this transformation, with the nation’s highest court finding that ‘‘prisoners have constitutional rights’’ and ‘‘prison officials were not free to do with prisoners as they pleased.’’8 At the same time, this article calls attention to the ways in which Cooper and other Stateville prisoners strategically crafted their protests and litigation to fit within this ‘‘scheme of ordered liberty,’’ ultimately winning recognition of their civil rights, albeit in a manner more limited than they had originally sought. Discipline and Punish in ‘‘The World’sToughest Prison’’ Cooper’s lawsuit sought to challenge the conditions of what was then known as the ‘‘World’s Toughest Prison,’’ a moniker owed as much to its foreboding architecture as much as for the man who Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 22 ^ Souls January^June 2013 ran it with strict discipline.9 Commissioned in 1909 for a site in Joliet, IL, the original plans for the prison drew on the panopticon or ‘‘roundhouse’’ model proposed by the nineteenth century English philosopher Jeremy Bentham. A circular building with an observation booth in the center and tiers of cells at its outer edge, the roundhouse was supposed to allow a guard to monitor any prisoner without him knowing it. Not only would this model provide for an efficient use of manpower, but it was also intended to impress upon the prisoner the omnipotence of the prison guard, thus encouraging the individual’s rehabilitation. Rather than just one roundhouse, the plans called for the construction of eight roundhouses linked to a central dining area. A prison environment, the lead architect promised, would not only treat prisoners with dignity, but also provide them the sunlight and fresh air conducive to their rehabilitation.10 However, during the course of construction, fiscal constraints limited these plans to just four cell houses and a massive rectangular cell house with five tiers and six hundred cells, the largest in the world. Its size was complemented by the world’s largest prison wall, which ran a mile and quarter long, thirty-three and a half feet high, and enclosed sixteen acres of prison grounds. After opening in 1925 as the largest correctional institution in the state with a capacity of 1,388 cells, Stateville would go through years of violent clashes as officials transferred those they considered Illinois’ worst offenders to the new, high security prison. While few reliable statistics are available, it is evident that the following decade was volatile, marked by brutality, escape, and general laxity, with Stateville ridiculed as ‘‘The Gangster’s Country Club.’’ This would change in October 1935, following the appointment of Joseph P. Ragen to run both Stateville and Joliet prisons. Unlike his predecessors, who had little corrections experience and often leveraged their appointment for political patronage, Ragen had gained a reputation for being a strict disciplinarian, first as a small town sheriff, then as warden of the Southern Illinois Penitentiary in Menard. Over the next twenty-six years, Ragen would work to transform Stateville into one of the most tightly run prisons in the country.11 Central to this transformation was the application of strict and uncompromising discipline. Each prisoner was subject to a web of rules that regulated nearly every aspect of his life in a manner that sharply contrasted with the idleness of the early 1930s. For instance, the new warden resurrected the silent system and guards enforced it at work, in the dining room, and while going from one to the other. In columns of twos or threes, prisoners moved from one section of the prison to another with military precision. ‘‘Ragen reasoned that the strictness of the Stateville regime would coerce the inmate into a Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 23 conformity that would ultimately produce respect for the rules. Through obedience to prison rules, the inmate would be resocialized.’’12 In the eyes of Chicago Tribune reporters who featured the prison in a 1955 series of articles Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Discipline at Joliet-Stateville is not merely strict; like security it is absolute. Not even the lightest infraction of the rules is tolerated. The inmates march to and from work, meals, the bathhouse, the barber shop, the commissary, in a column of twos, and they march in step. Profane or abusive language to employes [sic] or other inmates is not tolerated; neither is ‘‘insolence.’’13 Ragen considered nearly everything that was not food, clothes, and shelter a privilege that could be revoked from prisoners for the smallest infraction. The disciplinary captain could deny prisoners earphones, yard time, or mail privileges for leaving a shirt unbuttoned, neglecting to finish all his food, or failing to salute an officer. Guards issued disciplinary tickets to those who broke more serious rules, sending them to an isolation cell. Confinement in isolation was intended to be a short-term punishment. Confinement in a segregation cell, on the other hand, was a more far reaching punishment, leaving one under intense surveillance for an open-ended period of time, essentially until the warden determined that the inmate was suitable to return to general population. But in spite of Ragen’s claims of being ‘‘tough but fair,’’ the dispensation of discipline was rarely so. Staff rarely punished infractions by informants, while those considered troublemakers, like Thomas X. Cooper and other Muslims, were consistently harassed. Regardless of its biases, however, Regan’s tenure as warden was characterized by a marked decrease in violence, with no riots, no escapes, and only two guards and three inmates killed over twenty-five years.14 In reorganizing Stateville into a total institution, Ragen demonstrated what French philosopher Michel Foucault would later critique as the disciplinary power maximized in the Bentham’s prison model. ‘‘The Panopticon,’’ he argued, ‘‘presents a cruel, ingenious cage,’’ where constant surveillances compel the individual to take responsibility for constraining their own behavior.15 While conceived as more humane punishment than torture or capital punishment, imprisonment represented for Foucault a more sinister effort ‘‘to render individuals docile and useful, by means of precise work upon their bodies.’’16 For some Stateville prisoners, this constant surveillance had a profound effect on their emotional and psychological health. ‘‘You should know the record of insanity that has resulted from the routine established by rules,’’ wrote Roger Touhy, a prisoner in Stateville from the 1930s through the ‘50 s. ‘‘What a bad effect [sic] all those rules-rules-rules-have on men, particularly the young men who come down here. They can’t take it.’’17 Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 24 ^ Souls January^June 2013 Of course, there were challenges to Stateville’s strict discipline. Major Price, a career criminal and avowed communist (reportedly introduced himself to reporters from the Republican Chicago Daily Tribune with ‘‘I’m a black Russian’’),18 was involved in over one hundred disciplinary incidents between 1939 and 1944 and attempted multiple escapes.19 Unable to render him docile through repeated trips to the isolation, captains assigned him to a cell in the segregation unit for more than twelve years. During the 1940s and ‘50 s, numerous prisoners filed writs of habeas corpus, in an attempt to gain their freedom through the courts. Moreover, hundreds of inmates defied the prison’s rigid order against gambling or engaging in the active underground economy against coffee, cigarettes, and homemade liquor.20 Yet, direct and collective resistance to Stateville’s strict regime of control did not develop until the Nation of Islam gained prominence in the 1950s. Black Prisoners and the Color Line Thomas Cooper or ‘‘Colt’’ of the West Englewood neighborhood of Chicago arrived to Stateville on February 5, 1953. For most of the prison’s history, black men made up only a small portion of the prison’s population. Even though the penitentiary opened after the first wave of the Great Migration had swelled Chicago’s black population from only 44,103 in 1910 to 277,731 in 1940, over 8 percent of the city, the presence of black men in Stateville remained marginal through WWII.21 However, a series of changes both inside and outside of the Stateville would leave them making up the majority of facility’s prisoners by the mid-1950s. Paramount among these changes was a second surge in the Great Migration that lasted through the end of the war, resulting in increased competition for hard won industrial jobs with returning white veterans. Mapped on top of these shifts was the deterioration of the boundaries that maintained Bronzeville, the famous ‘‘Black Metropolis,’’ as a black ghetto in the late 1940s and early 1950s. During this period, African Americans increasingly migrated out of Chicago’s Black Belt because of its deteriorating housing stock, high population density, and the disruption caused by the Chicago Police Department’s more aggressive policing of the city’s Black ghetto.22 While these economic, social, and political forces of the early Cold War period were influential, it was the racial succession playing out in West Englewood and other predominantly white neighborhoods that would lay the foundation for the racial succession to take place in Stateville and other downstate prisons. By 1950, the black Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 25 population of Chicago had increased to 492,265, nearly double the total from the previous decade. Comprising nearly 14 percent of the city and gaining greater access to the white housing market, African Americans moved into the previously all-white neighborhoods on the borders of the Black Belt. For their part, Cooper’s parents, Thomas and Ollie, staked their family’s future on West Englewood, a thriving working class neighborhood that had been largely Irish, German, and Swedish up through the early 1950s.23 In Illinois, black prisoners from Chicago would come to constitute a greater proportion of the set of prisons that make up the Stateville– Joliet prisons complex.24 While African Americans made up 47 percent of the combined population of both prisons in 1953, they constituted 55 percent of this population five years later. By 1964, this shift had crested at 61 percent, where the proportion would rest before increasing once again at the outset of the 1970s. In part, what drove this change in proportions was the combined influence of the greater confinement of black prisoners and the decreasing confinement of non-black prisoners.25 For instance, there were 1,984 black prisoners in the two prisons in 1953, and this number would consistently increase each year, until peaking at 2,920 in 1964. The number of non-black prisoners, on the other hand, regularly decreased or remained the same during the decade following 1953.26 Rather than an isolated case, this racial succession taking place in the Stateville–Joliet complex was a microcosm of a broader national shift. While the number of people behind bars in the United States shrank during the1960s, most, if not all, of this decrease resulted from a drop in the number of white prisoners, while the total number of black and Latino prisoners continued to grow.27 As in most state prisons throughout the United States, the changing complexion of Stateville’s prison population did not bring with it a change in the prison’s social hierarchy. Through the 1950s, black prisoners found themselves in the dirtiest and most strenuous work assignment, while the remnant of the Italian or Irish gangs worked the system in a way that ensured better job opportunities. ‘‘While Ragenism never blatantly supported racism,’’ Jacobs writes, ‘‘blacks were expected to occupy a lower caste and conduct themselves with a deferential ‘Uncle Tomism’. Until 1962, few blacks held good jobs and no black employees were in positions of responsibility. Cell assignments and special details were strictly segregated.’’28 Prison officials, correction officers, and white prisoners generally expected that African Americans would know their place within Stateville. For their part, black prisoners lacked the social cohesion to overtly challenge these obstacles, even though they constituted a majority by the mid-1950s. Although the color line was more rigid in other prisons, Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 26 ^ Souls January^June 2013 it was nonetheless apparent and effective in maintaining Stateville’s shifting social order and persisted through the early 1970s. Just over two weeks prior to his arrival, Cooper and an accomplice had pled guilty in the murders of Walter Notrem and David Mattioli Sr. Both men were shot and killed in separate tavern holdups, in the Bridgeport neighborhood in 1952 and the Austin neighborhood in 1952, respectively, to which Cooper later admitted he had been an accomplice.29 According to police, however, Cooper and four other members of a ‘‘Negro bandit gang’’ had committed thirteen additional robberies, eleven of them in taverns, one in a department store, and one in a garage. Although several of his partners received lighter sentences—like seventeen-year-old Byron Grant who received only five years probation because he was ‘‘hopelessly paralyzed’’ in a gun battle and the Assistant States Attorneys told the court they did not want his care to become a burden on the state—the presiding criminal court judge sentenced Cooper to two consecutive sentences of one hundred years in prison.30 Cooper, who had worked at International Harvester and Howard’s Foundry in the months leading to his arrest, would be eligible for parole after thirty-three years. Upon his arrival, Stateville officials initially assigned Cooper to the prison’s educational program, joining 2,000 of the prison’s 4,450 inmates. It was here that officials first labeled him as a troublemaker. Cooper began attending the prison’s High School in May 1954, but was cut from the program after just seven months for fighting with a fellow inmate. As punishment, officials transferred him to a work assignment, specifically manual labor in the coal pit, one of the dirtiest jobs in the prison. Cooper would return to the school in September 1955 for nine months and again in August 1956 for two months, only to be dismissed each time for disciplinary violations.31 During these first four years, prison officials cited Cooper with 34 disciplinary reports for such offenses as refusing to work, refusing to obey an officer’s orders, loafing on the job, and deliberately damaging a typewriter during typing class.32 In early 1957, officials noted that Cooper, a Roman Catholic, was writing to Elijah Muhammad, expressing his interest in the NOI and asking that his name be registered with Chicago’s Temple No. 2 with an ‘‘X’’ to place the African heritage lost chattel enslavement. Originating in Depression-era Detroit, the NOI was established by Wallace D. Fard as a Muslim sect with an explicitly racial eschatology. To Fard, African people were naturally righteous and closest to God, while Europeans were inherently evil, a race of devils who made up for their biological inferiority through their propensity for wickedness. Describing himself as a religious prophet, Fard proclaimed that Allah was going to cleanse the world of wickedness Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 27 and the only way that the Original People, those of African descent, could escape the end times was by returning to Islam, their natural religion. Fard told his followers he had come to North America to save Allah’s Chosen People, African Americans, who he claimed had been kidnapped from their homeland in Mecca roughly 379 years ago.33 Soon after prison officials noted Cooper’s interest in the NOI, Warden Ragen instituted a new policy restricting the religious practices of inmate followers of Muhammad, banning ‘‘Black Muslim’’ religious services, visits from ministers, and written materials, including the Courier, as well as ‘‘dangerous congregations of Black Muslim inmates in particular places or assignments.’’34 During the 1965 District Court trial, Cooper testified that he had actually become interested in Islam as a young man, claiming to initially ‘‘registering as a member of the Islamic faith’’ at the age of thirteen and to having ‘‘re-registered in 1957.’’35 Cooper was likely introduced to Islam through adherents to Ahmadiyya, an Islamic religious movement that emerged in India in the late nineteenth century, just as NOI national spokesperson, Malcolm X, had prior to his incarceration.36 Indeed, in his initial handwritten appeal to the federal district court, Cooper alleged that prison officials were preventing him from contacting not only Elijah Muhammad, but also other ‘‘spiritual advisors’’ like Mr. Khalil Ahmad Nasir of the Ahmadiyya movement.37 However heterodox Cooper’s views on religion, his registration with the NOI marked him as more than a simple troublemaker at Stateville. From now on he would be considered a ‘‘Black Muslim’’ leader. Cooper later asserted that this was part of the prison’s general round up of NOI converts. Not long after he received his response from Muhammad, Cooper incurred his first serious infraction while outside working. In his written brief, Cooper originally alleged that Lieutenant McCollem and another correctional officer attacked him and two other prisoners with a blackjack at Warden Ragen’s instigation. After a brief struggle, Cooper and two other Muslims disarmed him and was marched to the isolation unit. However, after winning a hearing in Federal Court, Cooper dropped this claim, likely at his lawyer’s urging. For his part, the Assistant States Attorney General, challenged this version of events, asserting that on March 29, 1957, Officer Veatch cited Cooper with disregarding his order while working on the coal pile. ‘‘When I ordered the inmate to go to a certain place,’’ recounted the officer, ‘‘he not only ignored the order but also nearly ran his wheelbarrow into me.’’38 Veatch also cited two other inmates working on the coal pile for the same offense. When Lieutenant McCollem arrived to take them to Isolation, he charged they ‘‘stood sullen and whispered amongst themselves, before complying with his orders.’’39 Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 28 ^ Souls January^June 2013 According to official reports, rather than marching silently, all three inmates responded with such ‘‘belligerence and use of obscene language [that it] caused the officer to become apprehensive and seek aid from another guard.’’ After gaining assistance, they marched the prisoners until they reached a section of Stateville’s grounds that was outside of the tower guards’ line of sight. It was here, McCollem claimed, that Cooper attacked him without provocation, striking him in the eye. When he fell to his knees, Cooper’s fellow prisoners reportedly kicked him in the face and then attacked other officers who arrived on the scene. It was only after other guards arrived as reinforcements that the three prisoners were subdued and brought to the isolation cells. ‘‘Upon his arrival in the Isolation Building after this altercation,’’ wrote an Assistant States Attorney General, Cooper ‘‘again fought with the guards during what he described as an ‘ambush’ by them.’’40 By Cooper’s own account, it was Lieutenant ‘‘Big Mac’’ McCollem, the ‘‘penitentiary head buster,’’ who initially knocked Cooper out of the way to strike Freeman Powell. Grabbing McCollem’s arm when he tried to strike one of the other prisoners, Powell with a blackjack, Cooper claims that he disarmed McCollem, then James Weaver, a fellow prisoner, disarmed the other guards before they were walked to the Isolation Unit. Instead of being forced into the cell, Cooper contended that he voluntarily went into it, but not before he was ambushed by a team of guards. Whether he was forced or not, it is clear that he would spend the next fifteen days before being released and transferred to the Segregation Unit. As punishment for his fight with the guards, Cooper would remain in Segregation, for more than a year. There, prison guards kept him in a cell by himself with only a blanket and a ration of just one meal a day. As per regulations, he was only able to get a bath and a shave once a week as well as one haircut and one visitor per month. Rather than going to the yard to exercise, officials only allowed Cooper to walk around a small pen enclosed by a twenty-foot wall for thirty minutes, three to five times a week.41 Nevertheless, Cooper and seventeen other Muslims in segregation found ways to subvert the restrictions of their detention. According to prison records, they continued to worship together by communicating from cell-to-cell, often by taking the water out of their toilets and using the sewage pipes as a crude means of communication. They also joined each other in initiating hunger strikes and other disturbances like tossing food, utensils, and newspapers into the prison corridor.42 In a move that anticipated the grounds upon which Cooper would challenge Stateville’s rigid discipline, it was only after Cooper wrote to the Director of Public Safety, Joseph Bibb, in August 1958 and Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 29 Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 again in January 1959 to complain about the prison’s restriction on his attaining a Qu’ran and other religious materials. Directed back to Ragen, Cooper requested an opportunity to renew his subscription to these materials and the warden asked him to put the request in writing.43 In response to his letter, Ragen had Cooper brought to his office on March 7, 1959, offering him an opportunity to return to general population as long as he gave his personal assurance he would now abide by the rules, a formality for all prisoners being released from segregation that helped to affirm Ragen’s personal authority in Stateville. According to Cooper: [Ragen] confided to me that he feared I was an organizer and had Ulterior motives and In his observation of Me I was always surrounded by 100 to 150 inmates [mostly colored and Mexican] and with the population being four fifths [4=5] African [Colored] and there were rumored to be 100 inclined to Islam and about 8,000 sympathetic [his figure] he feared that I an [sic] my associates would be able to control his prison. He asked me whoes [sic] side are you on? I answered the Right side. I asked him Q. What is a Moslem Son? He could not answer. I asked him Q. What was the esoteric meaning of the Black Tassel on the Shiner’s Fez? He could not Answer.44 During Cooper’s 1965 testimony, he alleged that Ragen had promised to not only release him, but also provide him with his choice of prison strike. Cooper’s account of this conversation with Ragen is emblematic of the sense of superiority NOI converts claimed. Believing that he possessed the truth over the white devil’s trickery, Cooper sought to upend the prison’s traditional power dynamics. It was he, not the warden, who possessed the 360 degrees of spiritual, physical wisdom, and knowledge represented in the fez. According to Cooper, Ragen dismissed these questions, claiming Cooper was practicing black magic. Although Warden Ragen was releasing him from Segregation, he advised Cooper that he would have to ‘‘enlist the Courts’ aid to be permitted’’ any religious materials.45 This release from the Segregation Unit lasted for ‘‘about 90 days’’ when discoursing on the work pile [bean pile] in the mists [sic] of about [100] one hundred inmates your appellant was apprehended as soon as he reached the cell house and place [sic] in segregation, three [3] days later about 40 officers, lieutenants and a group of inmates referred to as the Goon Squad moved your appellant to the solitary—Isolation. After [15] days without food I was placed in the solitary confinement unit; where I still remain today.46 While this treatment confirmed Cooper’s sense of religious persecution, prison officials held that they returned him to Segregation on August 21 for ‘‘refusing to work and threatening an officer.’’ They would later assert in court documents that there always remained a standing offer for Cooper and other Black Muslims to leave Segregation when they agreed to submit to prison discipline, 30 ^ Souls January^June 2013 but that most had chosen to remain. Rather than an innocent victim, Stateville’s wardens would contend that Cooper had continued to lead disturbances in the Segregation wing, telling other inmates that while they might not win each fight with their guards, they could cause ‘‘an awful lot of destruction.’’47 As a result, Cooper would remain in segregation for the next eight years, petitioning the courts to get both access to religious materials and freedom from segregation, just as Ragen had advised. Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 From Black Supremacy to Religious Freedom On August 24, three days after officials returned him to Segregation, inmate Thomas X. Sadi Sasan Bey Cooper mailed a letter to his mother, Mrs. Ollie B. Cooper. ‘‘In the name of Allah Most Beneficent, Most Merciful, ’’ Cooper began, ‘‘to whom All praise Is due for opening my Blinded Eyes and deaf Ear’s Surely there is none greater than Allah and his is the praise, the Eternal, the Absolute, the greatest and there is none like him.’’48 After reciting the Bismillah, and conveying his regards to the family, Cooper then sought to remind his mother about the coming end of the white man’s world. ‘‘We are at the crossroads of the two worlds,’’ he wrote ‘‘one of which we have been lost in for over 400 years; This is the day that All black man [sic] will stand up and especially we here in North America; for, ‘Today, Allah has come for us’. And who can stay in power when Allah has decided against them.’’49 Reflecting the millennial outlook of the NOI, Cooper warned that Allah would soon put an end to ‘‘the devils [sic] world’’ before 1970. ‘‘Do they say I am a Anti-Integrationist,’’ he asked his mother in closing. ‘‘When one knows that a person or race is doom, if he be wise he should sit as far away from that person as the Heaven’s from the Earth.’’50 Indeed, it was this sense of not simply racial superiority, but also moral certainty that buttressed the NOI’s militancy, particularly in its response to the prison’s racial segregation and brutal violence. Later, during the 1965 hearing before Judge Austin, the attorney for Warden Pate pressed Cooper on the contents of this letter, presenting at a demonstration of his belief in the black supremacy and satisfaction with being held in segregation. ‘‘Haven’t many other prisoners become Black Muslims because of the teachings you gave them while held in segregation?,’’ the States Attorney asked Cooper. ‘‘Because of the segregation policy of Mr. Joseph E. Ragen, you don’t have to go to Alabama to be segregated. The whole penitentiary is segregated into black and white sectors,’’ Cooper responded. ‘‘Although it may appear that in the dining room the penitentiary is Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 31 integrated, it is still Mississippi. The holes are for white only and for black only and for Puerto Rican only. He is the racist not me.’’ When the states attorneys pressed him on these statements later while on the witness stand, Cooper demurred, stating that they reflected not hatred, but a sober assessment of how the failure of racial integration and the inevitable decline of American civilization. When he was pressed to explain the closing line of his letter, ‘‘I am fine and well, and the peace of Allah is upon me,’’ as something other than a reflection of his satisfaction with being confined to segregation because it kept him away from white people, Cooper explained that he was far from happy and compared segregation to hell.51 For Cooper, the break in his challenge to Ragenism came nearly two years after his return to Segregation when the Second Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a prior federal court ruling in Pierce v. Lavallee. In June 1961, the court heard an appeal claiming that officials at Clinton Prison in Dannemora, NY had violated the constitutional rights of the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a self-organized Islamic study group, by denying them access to the Qu’ran and spiritual advisers. The appeal also claimed that the plaintiffs, identified as the group’s leaders, had been confined to segregation and deprived of a ‘‘good time’’ because of their religion.52 Like Ragen, officials at Clinton had confined each of these prisoners to segregation in August 1959 for ‘‘agitating.’’53 Where NOI converts in other states had tried and failed to seek legal redress by filing a writ of habeas corpus, NOI convert Martin Sostre advised the prisoners who sued to base their suit upon Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act of 1871.54 Originally created to protect southern Blacks from the Ku Klux Klan and other terrorist groups, the act provided the plaintiffs with legal remedies, like monetary compensation, for violations of constitutionally protected rights by those acting under state authority. Conceding that there was room for limited federal judicial oversight of prisons on issues of constitutional rights, the appeals court held that the freedom of religion remained a ‘‘preferred right’’ that prison officials had violated in refusing to provide NOI converts with access to religious materials.55 While the appeals court left the issue of religious discrimination to be retried in front of the district court, the Columbia Law Review took notice of the decision’s significance. In ‘‘Black Muslims in Prison: Of Muslim Rites and Constitutional Rights,’’ the editors suggested that Pierce, along with several similar suits, illustrated the problems behind the courts’ slow recognition of prisoners’ rights. Finding that the arguments of Warden J. E. LaVallee had failed to justify his denial of constitutional rights, the editors contended that ‘‘before a prison official is allowed to lay his prohibitory hand on a religious Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 32 ^ Souls January^June 2013 group, a finding reviewable by the courts that the group presents a ‘clear and present danger’ to the orderly functioning of the prison should be required.’’56 While it is unlikely that Cooper had the chance to read this analysis of the Second Circuit’s opinion, he gathered enough legal information to base his own federal court suit against Ragen’s successor, Warden Pate, on this precedent. On July 5, 1962, Cooper filed Cooper v. Pate, without any formal legal assistance, or pro se.57 In addition to citing Pierce and the 1871 Civil Rights Act, Cooper’s suit also referenced Sections 3 and 8 of the Illinois Bill of Rights and the 1st, 5th, and 14th Amendments of the U.S. Constitution, though with little explanation. Five months later, Federal Judge Richard B. Austin dismissed his petition, a decision Cooper then appealed to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals’ three-judge panel, which also dismissed it, arguing that the Nation of Islam was not a religious organization. With the Supreme Court as the only remaining legal venue, Cooper filed his case from Segregation with the United States Supreme Court. In contrast to these lower court rulings, the Warren Court issued a one-paragraph order supporting Cooper’s writ, finding that his case had a legitimate claim and that the lower courts should have provided him with a trial.58 About a year earlier in Jones v. Cunningham (1963), the Warren Court had ruled that state prisoners had the right to file a writ of habeas corpus to challenge both the legality and the conditions of their imprisonment. Together with the court’s decision in Cooper, these cases upended a century-long ‘‘hands off’’ policy regarding federal involvement in state incarceration.59 As the case wound its way through the courts, Stateville officials subjected Cooper and other converts to even greater surveillance in an attempt to bolster the warden’s case for a possible trial. During its 1965 appeal of the Supreme Court ruling, the Attorney General’s office submitted a copy of Cooper’s disciplinary record from his arrival at Stateville to the beginning of his trial. It consisted of eighty-seven disciplinary tickets, fourteen of them given out between February 1964 and February 1965 for the same offense: ‘‘contacting other inmates through the pipes of the Segregation Unit plumbing system.’’60 His office also submitted a copy of a letter found by guards in early January 1965, with one NOI convert advising another on how to handle himself so as to follow through with the ‘‘good case’’ they had ‘‘to go into the Supreme Court’’: what we want is for his (devil) to persecute you for strictly religious [sic] reason, without his [sic] be able to add anything to it. Brother believe me I have my eyes [sic] ears open, it seem to me every time a brother [sic] get this devil up tight to take him into Court for religion persecution, they let him off the hook . . . at all cost in the future if it is the will of Allah, please try not to blow again, when Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 33 Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 the Brother [sic] come down [Warden] Pate will pull every record and show to him that he is not persecuting you for your religion, but you broke his law, then where do that leave the Brother, standing there looking like a fool. Islam is justice so [sic] let give the brothers some ground to stand on when he come down alright. I know just how you feel about this thing, because I feel like blowing [sic] sometime my self. I think about that would only hurt the Leader and Teacher, and I would rather die first before I do that.61 Discovered during a search of the inmate’s barbershop among a cache of cigarettes, this letter was signed ‘‘Charles L X,’’ believed to be an alias for Charles Bey. For Bey, keeping a calm demeanor in prison, as Cooper had during his interview with Warden Ragen, was an important aspect of successfully pursuing a first amendment freedom of religion suit. Addressed to ‘‘Hoard,’’ or Robert Hoard, who prison officials considered ‘‘one of the most extreme radicals and persistent agitators in this institution,’’ the letter indicates that many NOI converts were aware of the legal efforts Cooper, Pierce, and others were pursuing.62 While it is not clear whether Cooper is the ‘‘Leader and Teacher’’ who Bey is referring to, it is evident that Bey and others understood that getting a favorable hearing in federal court was premised on their ability to frame their case as one of mistreatment based upon their religious beliefs. Moreover, it calls attention to the ways in which the NOI operated not solely as a religious collective, but also an astute political community, cognizant of and attuning its members’ actions to events taking place outside of the prison walls. Echoing Bey’s analysis, the NOI’s newspaper, Muhammad Speaks, would claim victory on behalf of all NOI members when Judge Austin, who had dismissed Cooper’s suit three years prior, ruled in the prisoner’s favor on July 23, 1965.63 Judge Austin found that Cooper should be allowed to have a Qu’ran, attend religious services, and communicate with NOI ministers. ‘‘A religion is not a subject of knowledge, but only a matter of opinion,’’ wrote Austin in his opinion. ‘‘It is not the function of this court to determine the merits of an alleged religion, however excellent or fanatical or preposterous said religion may seem.’’ A special article in Muhammad Speaks hailed the ruling as ‘‘another historic victory in Federal Court in [the] fight for religious freedom in and out of prison.’’ The ruling, the article explained, established that Muhammad’s interpretation of Islam did constitute a religion and would force the state of Illinois to protect the constitutional right of its followers to worship in prison.64 Undaunted, prison officials sought to delay the implementation of this ruling and the Illinois Attorney General’s office would appeal it back to the Seventh Circuit, but in 1967 it ruled that officials ‘‘had not shown that there was a greater threat to the safety of the 34 ^ Souls January^June 2013 prisoners by the adherents of Elijah Muhammad than by the adherents of other beliefs.’’65 Ultimately, Austin’s decision laid a foundation which others would use to secure the civil rights of inmates, not only in Stateville, but also in other prisons across the country. Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Conclusion: From Prisoners’ Rights to Mass Incarceration Although Judge Austin ruled in Cooper’s favor on issues of religious freedom, he also denied several of his substantive claims. For instance, he refused to allow Muslims to receive Muhammad Speaks and other organizational literature, as well as Arabic and Swahili textbooks. Even more importantly, he refused to order Cooper’s release from segregation, even though he had been there since 1959, making his time in the unit almost record length.66 Instead, Judge Austin found that Cooper’s confinement was ‘‘for normal disciplinary reasons and not because of any religious beliefs [Cooper] may hold.’’ Moreover, during the course of the trial Warden Pate, charged with the authority to release Cooper, indicated that he would consider a written request from Cooper seeking release from segregation. After the trial, Cooper did write such a letter, but Pate refused to release him. In response, Cooper sought to have Judge Austin’s decision amended such that Pate would be ordered to release him from segregation or compelled to issue express rules for obtaining release. When this failed, Cooper added his own appeal of this decision to Pate’s of Judge Austin’s ruling. On June 29, more than a decade after Cooper’s initial confinement to segregation, the Seventh Circuit rendered its judgment on these appeals. In addition to affirming the lower court’s decision, the three judge panel concluded by noting that ‘‘the record before us at this time does not show that the refusal to codify standards for release nor the refusal to release upon receipt of the letter is a deprivation of any federally-protected right.’’ Moreover, the judges refused to address the question of whether Cooper’s inability to attend religious services because of his confinement in segregation was a violation of his freedom of religion, as this was not a line of argument raised before Judge Austin and deemed it inappropriate for their consideration. For one reason or another, neither Cooper nor his lawyers appealed this decision to the Supreme Court or sought to have it reheard before Judge Austin.67 From the historical record, it is not evident what became of Cooper after 1972, whether he was paroled, or even whether Stateville officials ever released him from the Segregation Unit. It is evident, however, that despite Warden Pate’s initial intransigence, Judge Austin’s Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 35 decision would inform an improvement in the treatment of Stateville’s converts to the Nation of Islam. Although it would take several years for Cooper and others to receive access to religious services on par with those provided to adherents to other religions, a gradual change did take place during the late 1960s and into the next decade. This shift in the deprivation of religious freedom was conditioned by a decline in the militancy of the NOI as well as a shift in the attitude of prison officials to NOI converts more generally, as they were no longer seen as a threat to institutional security. By 1977, Jacobs notes, it was not uncommon to hear guards refer to them as ‘‘some of our best inmates.’’ It is also evident that the hesitancy of the federal courts to call into question matters of prison security highlights a key point around which the emerging Prisoners’ Rights movement would pivot during the 1970s. Just as the struggle for the freedom to convert other prisoners to the Nation of Islam laid a foundation for how prisoners and their supporters would challenge prison administration through collective action and civil litigation, matters of prison security would foreclose more radical transformations of the prison system. As movement histories like Eric Cummins’ Rise and Fall of the California’s Radical Prison Movement and Donald Tibbs’ From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union have detailed, the legal and administrative backlash to the movement’s gains based itself on questions of the maintenance of prison order. Throughout the decade, the deprivation of prisoners’ rights would repeatedly be justified in terms of institutional security. As a result, the development of mass incarceration during the 1980s through the turn of the century, would be a process of not only imprisoning more than 2.3 million people, but also a proliferation of maximum and super-maximum security prisons as well as Security Housing Units (SHUs) and Communication Management Units (CMUs), ostensibly, like Warden Ragen’s Segregation Unit, to hold the ‘‘worst of the worst’’ regardless of how inhumane the conditions and opaque the process of transitioning out of these facilities. Notes 1. James B. Jacobs, Stateville: The Penitentiary in Mass Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977), 65. 2. Memo to Warden Frank Pate from, July 3, 1964, 6. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. 3. Ibid. 4. Jacobs, Stateville 61–62. Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 36 ^ Souls January^June 2013 5. See ‘‘4 Muslim Convicts Stage a Rebellion,’’ New York Times, July 4, 1964, 7; ‘‘Four ‘Black Muslims’ Revolt at Stateville,’’ Chicago Tribune, July 4, 1964, 3. 6. Marie Gottschalk, The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006) 175. 7. Oliver Jones, ‘‘The Black Muslim Movement and the American Constitutional Order,’’ Journal of Black Studies13, no. 4 (June 1983), 431. 8. James B. Jacobs, ‘‘The Prisoners’ Rights Movement and Its Impact, 1960–80,’’ Crime and Justice 2 (1980): 434. 9. Long time warden Joseph P. Ragen promoted this notoriety, even making the term the title of the 1962 book length portrait of Stateville, Inside the World’s Toughest Prison, he co-authored with journalist Charles Flinstone in 1962. 10. Ibid.; John M. Lamb, The Collected Works of Historian John M. Lamb: The History of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and Related Subjects (Romeoville, IL: Lewis University, 2004), 234–236. 11. Gladys Erickson, Warden Ragen of Stateville (New York: Dutton Books, 1957), 34. 12. Jacobs, 46. 13. George Wright, ‘‘Inside Stateville—World of Its Own,’’ Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1955, 1. 14. Jacobs, 42. 15. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 205. 16. Ibid., 231. 17. Roger Touhy, ‘‘Stateville Prison and Warden Ragen,’’ in Gladys Erickson, ed., Warden Ragen of Stateville (New York: Dutton Books, 1957), 192. Prisoners even developed a term, ‘‘going stir bugs,’’ to refer to a sort of paranoia that came from feelings as if one was constantly being watched and discussed. See Jacobs, 45. 18. Wright and Manly, ‘‘Some Convicts Make a Tough Life Tougher,’’ Chicago Daily Tribune, July 6, 1955, 1. 19. Erickson, Warden Ragen of Stateville, 132-3. 20. Jacobs, 49–50. It is worth noting that between 1944 and 1957, Stateville’s most prominent jailhouse lawyer Maurice Meyers unsuccessfully appealed ten separate cases against warden Ragen to the U.S. Supreme Court. He also assisted a number of inmates in preparing writs of habeas corpus. At one point, Ragen placed Meyers in segregation for a year for refusing to return records he smuggled out of the prison in order to blackmail Ragen into allowing inmate commissary funds to be used for a legal assistance program. See, Jacobs, 50. 21. Claude Clegg III, An Original Man: The Life and Times of Elijah Muhammad (New York: St. Martins Press, 1998), 37; Paul Street, Still Separate, Unequal: Race, Place, Policy and the State of Black Chicago (Chicago: Chicago Urban League, 2005), 2. 22. This increase in policing took place within the context of the Chicago Police Department’s crackdown on the South Side policy racket. For decades, a web of police payoffs and political corruption had allowed the policy to flourish under the control of black organized crime. This ‘‘hands off’’ attitude left Bronzeville under policed and a haven for vice. It also left the policy racket a multi-million dollar operation employing an estimated 7,000 and providing capital for numerous legitimate businesses. Interestingly, more aggressive policing coincided with the Italian mafia’s efforts to take over South side policy wheels. After the kidnappers of Policy King ‘‘Big’’ Ed Jones wounded a police officer during their get away on May 11, 1946, Police Commissioner Prendergast’s promised to stamp out the policy before the Outfit could take it over. Yet arresting numbers runners, suspected raiding policy stations, and indicting the alleged operators of policy wheels drew harsh criticism from community leaders, especially Representative William Dawson. See Robert Lombardo, ‘‘The Black Mafia: African-American Organized Crime in Chicago, 1890–1960,’’ Crime, Law & Social Change 38 (2002): 50–52. 23. Arnold Hirsh, The Making of the Second Ghetto: Race & Housing, 1940–1960 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago, 1998) 58. 24. This was not just a local phenomenon, but part of a national trend. Legal scholar Scott Christianson suggests that in the ‘40 s and ‘50 s this shift in the racial makeup of prison populations was taking place across the country. ‘‘During the postwar years,’’ he writes, ‘‘it became more evident that an increasingly disproportionate number of inmates were Negro, Hispanic, or Native American, and that virtually all prison administrators and correction officers were white.’’ Scott Christianson, With Liberty for Some: 500 Years of Imprisonment in America (Boston: Northeastern University Press 1998), 253. 25. Latinos and other non-black racial minorities were officially counted as white. See Jacobs, p. 235, table 8, fn. a. 26. Jacobs, 57, 235, table 8.; After the implementation of the state’s new Model Penal Code in 1962, the numbers of both black and non-black prisoners in the two prisoners declined, as made thousands eligible for Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 Black Protest, Politics, and Forms of Resistance ^ 37 an early parole Jacobs notes while there were 739 paroles from the Joliet-Stateville complex in 1961, there were 1,046 paroles in 1962. ‘‘The figure has remained at close to or above 1,000 ever since’’ (57). 27. Sundiata Acoli, ‘‘An Updated History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle (Abridged),’’ in Joy James, ed. Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners Write on Life, Liberation, and Rebellion (New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 143–144. 28. Jacobs, 59–60. 29. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, the other three members of the ‘‘gang’’ were supposed to have helped with the Mattioli robbery, but did not meet up with Cooper and twenty-three-year-old Oscar Beadle as planned. ‘‘Report 12 Bar Robberies and Murder Solved,’’ Chicago Daily Tribune, August 29, 1952, 16. 30. ‘‘2 Killings Bring 200 Year Terms for 2 Robbers,’’ Chicago Daily Tribune, January 20, 1953, 4. 31. William G. Clark et al., ‘‘Brief of Defendants-Appellants,’’ May 17, 1966, 6. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. 32. ‘‘Memo to Joseph E. Ragen Re: Inmate #33257—Cooper, T.’’ March, 29, 1975. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 62. 33. Erdmann Doane Beynon, ‘‘The Voodoo Cult Among Negro Migrants to Detroit,’’ The American Journal of Sociology 43, no. 6 (May 1938), 901. 34. William G. Clark et al., ‘‘Brief of Defendants-Appellants,’’ May 17, 1966, 6. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. [‘‘Black Muslims at the Illinois State Penitentiary’’ pg. 23.]. 35. William G. Clark et al., ‘‘Brief of Defendants-Appellants,’’ May 17, 1966, 5–6. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. 36. Malcolm ‘‘Shorty’’ Jarvis, The Other Malcolm X—‘‘Shorty’’ Jarvis: His Memoir (Jefferson, NC: McFarland and Company, 1998) 56. 37. Thomas X. Cooper, ‘‘An Appeal from Federal District Court,’’ Cooper v. Pate. February 3, 1963. No. 62C138, 8. For several decades, the Ahmadiya movement was influential important in introducing African Americans to Islam. The Moorish Science Temple of America’s Noble Drew Ali also learned of Islam from members of the Ahmadiyya movement. 38. ‘‘Memo to Joseph E. Ragen Re: Inmate #33257—Cooper, T.’’ March, 29, 1975. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 62. 39. Ibid., 2. 40. Ibid., 7. Cooper’s NOI-appointed attorney conceded that his client had violated a rule by loafing on a work assignment, but disputed Ragen and Pate’s account: ‘‘[Cooper] was walked towards the isolation cells where he was to be confined as punishment. While walking towards the cells, an altercation arose among plaintiff, two other inmates walking with him, and the guards who were escorting him. After fifteen days in isolation, plainfiff was incarcerated in the unit of the prison known as ‘Segregation’ and a separate establishment located some distance away from the building housing the general population.’’ Edward Jacko, ‘‘Brief of Plaintiff-Appellee,’ September 16, 1966, 6–7. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. 41. George Wright and Chesley Manly, ‘‘Some Convicts Make a Tough Life Tougher,’’ Chicago Daily Tribune, July 6, 1955, 1. 42. ‘‘Disciplinary Record of Thomas Cooper,’’ n.d., 1–4. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 4. 43. Cooper transcribed both Bibbs response each letter as exhibit A and B in his 1963 appeal affidavit. In both letters, Bibb advised his Cooper to take these complaints up with Ragen while proposing that the disciplinary records of he and other ‘‘Black Muslims’’ was a possible explanation for the restrictions of the so-called Religious literature. See Thomas X. Cooper, ‘‘An Appeal from Federal District Court,’’ February 3, 1963, 15–16. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 351, Folder 14127. 44. Ibid., 10. 45. Ibid. 46. Thomas X. Cooper, ‘‘An Appeal from Federal District Court,’’ February 3, 1963, 8. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 351, Folder 14127. 47. William G. Clark et al., ‘‘Brief of Defendants-Appellants,’’ May 17, 1966, 10. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. 48. Thomas X. Cooper to Mrs. Ollie B. Cooper, August 24, 1959, 1. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 3. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid., 2. 51. Appendix of Defendant Appellants, Volume 1, 602–4, 1. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 6. Downloaded by [University of Chicago Library] at 12:10 27 July 2013 38 ^ Souls January^June 2013 52. ‘‘Constitutional Law. In General. Right to Practice Black Muslim Tenets in State Prisons. Pierce v. LaVallee (2nd Cir. 1961); In re Ferguson (Cal. 1961),’’ Harvard Law Review 75, no. 4 (Feb, 1962): 837. 53. Pierce v. LaVallee, 212 F. Supp. 865, 1962 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3322. 54. See In re Ferguson, 55 Cal. 2d 667, 361 P.2d 417, 12 Cal. Rep. 753 cert. denied, 368 U.S. 864 (1961). 55. ‘‘Constitutional Law,’’ 837. 56. ‘‘Black Muslims in Prison: Of Muslim Rites and Constitutional Rights,’’ Columbia Law Review 62, no. 8 (December 1962): 1503. 57. Martha Biondi, To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar New York City (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 204. 58. ‘‘Black Muslim Convict Wins Religion Plea: Claims Rights are Ignored,’’ Chicago Tribune, June 23, 1964, A7. 59. Although the court’s ruling the year prior in United States v. Muniz had extended this right of access to federal prisoners, the Cooper ruling opened the possibility of civil rights for state prisoners, the overwhelming majority of the national prison population. 60. Jacobs, 67. 61. Memo to Warden Frank Pate from Senior Captain E. E. Morris, January 15, 1965, 1. Records of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, Box 15462, Folder 6. 62. Ibid., 2. 63. As NOI ministers were at pains to stress in their public statements, Muslims were law-abiding people who would only consider using violence in self-defense. Prison riots raised the specter of violent racial conflict that had haunted the organization’s public image since its inception. Moreover, the NOI leadership was likely distracted by a severe internal split. On March 8th, National Spokesman Malcolm X publicly broke with the NOI following a ninety-day suspension imposed by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad for comments made to the press in the wake of President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Since the beginning of this period of silence, tensions had increased between the thousands of Muslims who left the Nation with Malcolm and rival ministers who remained loyal to Muhammad. Throughout the spring and summer of 1964, Muhammad Speaks, the news organ Malcolm had established, was turned against him. Over several months, various ministers—including his own brother and the person who had first introduced Malcolm to the Nation, Philbert X—publicly castigated him for hypocrisy and betrayal, while ominously hinting at bloody reprisals. These threats of violence were nearly realized on the night June 16th, as police arrested six armed followers of Malcolm following their confrontation with thirty-five members of the NOI’s security force, the Fruit of Islam (FOI). By July, Malcolm would counter by making public allegations of Muhammad’s adulterous affairs, thereby escalating the internecine tensions that would ultimately lead to Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21st, 1965. Clegg III, An Original Man, 214–216. 64. ‘‘Illinois Court Forced to Uphold Muslim Rights to Freedom of Religion,’’ Muhammad Speaks, June 18, 1965, 6. 65. Cooper v. Pate, 382 F.2d 518 (1967), 1. 66. Jacobs, 65. 67. Cooper v. Pate, 1967 U.S. App. 5793, 16. About the Author Toussaint Losier is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department of the University of Chicago. His doctoral research is in 20th century U.S. history, with a focus on the grassroots responses to the emergence of mass incarceration in postwar Chicago. A native of Philadelphia, PA, Mr. Losier is an honors graduate of Harvard University. Among other awards, he has been recognized as a University of Chicago Century, Ford Foundation Predoctoral, and Mellon Mays Dissertation fellow.