Abolish Prison Slavery. [Drop title].

Berkeley, California: Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery, (n. d.), circa 1980. 24 x 18 inches. Broadside. White stock silkscreen printed in blue and brown. Short crease to top edge; light stain to right margin; minor soiling to verso. Very Good.

Poster issued by the Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery (CAPS), featuring a large illustration of an incarcerated man holding a broken chain in one hand and opening a prison cell door with the other. Printed on the cell door is the text of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as CAPS' proposed change: "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to her jurisdiction."

CAPS was founded in 1976 by Lee Wood and Barbara Esposito, along with other formerly incarcerated men and women. Several of the people who later became involved with CAPS were spurred by the Attica massacre to examine their oppressive conditions while in prison, and formed a clandestine discussion group that included studying the U.S. Constitution. As Esposito and Wood write in Prison Slavery (Silver Spring, Maryland: Printed by Joel Lithographic, Inc., 1982), "A few of the original study group members were paroled during 1975 and 1976, and proceeded to contact those community people to whom we had previously smuggled our analysis. Together we organized the Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery. ... Since our beginning, we have obtained several thousand signaures on the nationally distributed Petition to Abolish Prison Slavery and, through grassroots methods of organizing, we grow closer to the abolition of prison slavery and the return of inalienable citizenship, labor, and human rights to our incarcerated brothers and sisters" (p. 2).

OCLC locates one holding at the University of Michigan, and we note one other at OMCA.