The Dark Story of Cummins Prison Farm — The Arkansas Prison the State Left to Its Own Prisoners
Behind The Walls History
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In 1968 the Cummins prison farm covered about sixteen thousand five hundred acres of Lincoln County, Arkansas, land bought from two plantations in 1902 and worked ever since by people the state has never paid. For most of its history Arkansas employed no more than eight paid guards on that ground. The rest of the work of holding roughly a thousand people was done by prisoners.
They were ranked. Trusties at the top, do-pops in the middle, rank men at the bottom. Trusties carried rifles, rode the field lines on horseback, controlled the distribution of food and mail, and could leave the farm during the day. A rank man paid another prisoner for his own mail, for access to a doctor, for a share of the food he had grown, and for the right to sleep unharmed.
The men slept in open barracks, in rows of cots, with no paid guard inside the room after dark. In eighteen months there were seventeen stabbings at Cummins, all but one of them in the barracks, four of them fatal. The punishment building held eleven bare cells, ten feet by eight, with as many as eleven men in one.
In January 1968 a prisoner led diggers to unmarked graves on the property, and three sets of remains came out of the ground.
Built from federal court records, the 1966 state police report, and the prison's own history.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
• Holt v. Sarver, 300 F. Supp. 825 (E.D. Ark. 1969)
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/...
• Holt v. Sarver, 309 F. Supp. 362 (E.D. Ark. 1970)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holt_v...
• Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978)
• Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571 (8th Cir. 1968)
• Criminal Investigations Division, Arkansas State Police, Tucker Prison Farm Investigation, 1966
• Thomas Murton and Joe Hyams, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal, Grove Press, 1969
• Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Cummins State Farm, Arkansas Register nomination, 2023
https://www.arkansasheritage.com/arka...
• Colin Woodward, The Arkansas Prison Scandal, Arkansas Times, 2018
https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stori...
• Colin Woodward, Cummins Unit, Encyclopedia of Arkansas
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/en...
• Dorothy S. McClellan, Finney v. Hutto, Encyclopedia of Arkansas
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/en...
• Fred Barbash, Arkansas Lets the Light Into Brubaker's Dark Ages Prison, The Washington Post, September 21, 1980
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Executions of April 2017
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/en...
Thank you for watching!
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The Dark Story of Cummins Prison Farm — The Arkansas Prison the State Left to Its Own Prisoners
Behind The Walls History
13,784 views
Subscribe to keep uncovering the stories history tried to leave behind these walls.
In 1968 the Cummins prison farm covered about sixteen thousand five hundred acres of Lincoln County, Arkansas, land bought from two plantations in 1902 and worked ever since by people the state has never paid. For most of its history Arkansas employed no more than eight paid guards on that ground. The rest of the work of holding roughly a thousand people was done by prisoners.
They were ranked. Trusties at the top, do-pops in the middle, rank men at the bottom. Trusties carried rifles, rode the field lines on horseback, controlled the distribution of food and mail, and could leave the farm during the day. A rank man paid another prisoner for his own mail, for access to a doctor, for a share of the food he had grown, and for the right to sleep unharmed.
The men slept in open barracks, in rows of cots, with no paid guard inside the room after dark. In eighteen months there were seventeen stabbings at Cummins, all but one of them in the barracks, four of them fatal. The punishment building held eleven bare cells, ten feet by eight, with as many as eleven men in one.
In January 1968 a prisoner led diggers to unmarked graves on the property, and three sets of remains came out of the ground.
Built from federal court records, the 1966 state police report, and the prison's own history.
SOURCES & FURTHER READING
• Holt v. Sarver, 300 F. Supp. 825 (E.D. Ark. 1969)
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/...
• Holt v. Sarver, 309 F. Supp. 362 (E.D. Ark. 1970)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Holt_v...
• Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978)
• Jackson v. Bishop, 404 F.2d 571 (8th Cir. 1968)
• Criminal Investigations Division, Arkansas State Police, Tucker Prison Farm Investigation, 1966
• Thomas Murton and Joe Hyams, Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal, Grove Press, 1969
• Arkansas Historic Preservation Program, Cummins State Farm, Arkansas Register nomination, 2023
https://www.arkansasheritage.com/arka...
• Colin Woodward, The Arkansas Prison Scandal, Arkansas Times, 2018
https://arktimes.com/news/cover-stori...
• Colin Woodward, Cummins Unit, Encyclopedia of Arkansas
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/en...
• Dorothy S. McClellan, Finney v. Hutto, Encyclopedia of Arkansas
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/en...
• Fred Barbash, Arkansas Lets the Light Into Brubaker's Dark Ages Prison, The Washington Post, September 21, 1980
• Encyclopedia of Arkansas, Executions of April 2017
https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/en...
Thank you for watching!