Newly Discovered Black Prison Memoir written before the Era of Mass Incarceration
A review of The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict by Austin Reed
Austin Reed’s The Life and the Adventures of a Haunted Convict is a well written prison memoir. It was written around 1858 however it was discovered about 10 years ago in an estate sale. Researchers verified Reed’s story and found that he was a prisoner in the 1800’s in New York, making this the earliest known African-American prison memoir.
Reed tells his life and adventures as if it were a novel. Many have compared it to Charles Dickens writing. I found the biblical imagery used throughout very interesting. The characters of people that he met along the way are also fascinating. The sad part about reading his memoir is that I kept thinking about the similarities to today’s problem of mass incarceration. This quote by Reed struck me:
“it makes my heart ache every time I see so many young men a rushing within the walls of a gloomy prison. where in the course of time he will become the harden inmate of a gloomy prison”
And this quote by Horace Cook to Reed:
“Within these walls are some of the smartest and intellectual young men that are in this country, young men endowed with a good education and a good reason, and who might have done a good deal of good and might been bright and shining ornaments in the world and angels in heaven-but instead of that they are spending the best of their days in a dark and a gloomy prison”.
I highly recommend that you read this book especially the research in the introduction and the endnotes. The records included in the Appendix were also fascinating especially the two letters that the researchers found from Reed to the House of Refugee.
- Adapted from my February 2017 review on Goodreads.
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