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Many corporations whose products we consume on a daily basis have learned that prison labor power can be as profitable as third world labor power exploited by U.S.-based global corporations. Both relegate formerly unionized workers to joblessness and many even wind up in prison. Some of the companies that use prison labor are IBM, Motorola, Compaq, Texas Instruments, Honeywell, Microsoft, and Boeing. But it is not only the hi-tech industries that reap the profits of prison labor. Nordstrom department stores sell jeans that are marketed as “Prison Blues,” as well as t-shirts and jackets made in Oregon prisons. The advertising slogan for these clothes is “made on the inside to be worn on the outside.” Maryland prisoners inspect glass bottles and jars used by Revlon and Pierre Cardin, and schools throughout the world buy graduation caps and gowns made by South Carolina prisoners.
Source:
http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/davisprison.html
1773 - “Phillis Wheatley's 'Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral' Published” "Phillis Wheatley, the first professional African-American woman poet, became the first African-American woman whose writings were published with the printing of this volume. The book was published by Archibald Bell, the leading bookseller and printer London at the time, who required proof that Wheatley had written the poems herself. The volume of poems, 39 in all, broke barriers for African-American writers, as it was illegal in several of the states in the U.S. for a slave to learn how to read or write."