Details:
At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $392 million to $1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $2 per hour, well under the minimum.
Source:
The Prison Industry in the United States: Big Business or a New Form of Slavery?
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."