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Davis, Angela, et al. If They Come in the Morning Voices of Resistance. The Third Press: New York, 1971.
Franklin, H. Bruce. Prison Literature in America. Lawrence Hill & Company, Westport Conn, 1982.
Van Deburg, William L. The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975. University of Chicago Press: Chicago, 1992.
Is Prison Becoming the Norm for Black Males?.
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In the last two decades the population of black male inmates grew three times as fast as the number of black men enrolled in higher education. Authored by the Justice Policy Institute, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, the study showed that in 2000 there were 791,000 men in jail or prison and 603,000 enrolled in colleges or universities. In 1980, the study noted, those numbers were 143,000 and 463,700 respectively. Although comparisons of the two categories are not symmetrical, students comprise a narrower age range than prison inmates. The difference in numbers over two decades reveals the corrosive effect of our incarceration epidemic on the health of the African American community. .
One could argue that African Americans as a result of they"re historically subordinate and oppressed position, have encompassed a unique sub-cultural position within American society. In America, the status affixed to race as a defining feature suggests a degree of inter-correctness among black people who have inhabited varying subordinate subcultures with respect to the pervasive white mainstream. A specific African-American subculture that has played a significant role in the American cultural landscape through its intensified position of racial subordination in black prisoners. This subculture has historically ranged from the enchained position of slaves to more contemporary manifestos of political prisoners.
