| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1

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| Exhibition Review | The Journal of American History, 91.1 | The History Cooperative

Exhibition Reviews

Texas Prison Museum, 491 State Highway 75 N., Huntsville, TX 77320.

Permanent exhibition, opened Nov. 2002. M–Sa 10–6, Su 12–5 May 1–Sept. 30; M–Sa 10–5, Su 12–5 Oct. 1–April 30; closed Easter, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, New Years Day. Adults $4, children 6–17 $2, under 6 free, seniors $3. 6,000 sq. ft. Weldon Svoboda, designer; James Willett, director.

Internet: general information <http://www.txprisonmuseum.org> (April 12, 2004).

With the national prison population topping two million, there now exists within the United States a nation within a nation. Despite its significance, this carceral nation remains invisible to most Americans. One of the largest "states" in this nation is the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), formerly known as the Texas Department of Corrections (TDC), now master of 150,000 inmates scattered across fifty facilities and commanding an annual expenditure of 2.5 billion dollars, equivalent to the GNP (gross national product) of Haiti. The nerve center of the TDCJ is in Huntsville, about seventy miles north of Houston. Nine prison facilities, including the "Walls" unit, home of the state's busy execution chamber, dominate the town. But Huntsville is also home to an unusual public history site, the Texas Prison Museum. Visited by nearly twenty thousand people in the ten months after it opened in its current location in November 2002 and selling $70,000 in gift shop items in that same time, the small nonprofit museum supports itself.

To its great credit, the museum draws back a veil from a normally hidden and forgotten world. The interior of the single-room exhibit space evokes the spartan prison environment with concrete flooring, the "yellow line" directing inmates where to stand, exposed pipe ducts, brick walls, and chain link fence topped with barbed wire. Visitors can step inside a replica 6-by-9-foot two-bunk cell (circa 1980s), though the chilling effect is somewhat marred by the kitschy offer to have your photo taken while wearing "an authentic prison striped shirt." Photographs and artifacts reveal the world of prison work, clothing, and homemade weaponry, the ubiquity of gang tattoos, the pathos of release and reunion with family members, and the immensely popular bygone spectacle of the annual Texas Prison Rodeo, which regularly drew crowds of fifteen thousand until it ended in 1986.

If the museum helps demystify the world behind bars, its historical narrative and cultural interpretation unabashedly reflect the views of prison administrators. The display of guard and inmate material culture conveys an impression of ceaseless war between the keepers and the kept. One glass case memorializes prison personnel killed in the line of duty; another contains the tools of domination—handcuffs, shackles, restraints, and even the strap used for corporal punishment until the 1940s. As for prisoner artifacts, it appears that every innovation designed to prevent inmates from fashioning utensils of mayhem was soon challenged by inmate ingenuity in developing new ones.

Six wall panels trace the evolution of the Texas prison system from the "Early Years" (1848–1871) to the "Modern Penal System" of today. The panels present a history of gradual progress and reform, thwarted in the 1970s and 1980s by the prisoners' rights movement and the federal courts. Certainly the narrative acknowledges the "abuse and mismanagement" that characterized the profitable "Convict Lease Period" (1871–1912) and even the continued brutalities in the subsequent era. Judged as "among the worst in the nation" in 1944, we are told, the Texas prison system embarked on a period of reform (1948–1972) that instituted industrial and education programs, mechanized prison farm agriculture, and professionalized correctional officers.

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