A corporation created in 1934 and owned by the federal government, oversees penal labor, and sets the condition and wage standards for working inmates. UNICOR’s official line is that in exchange for their slave labor, prisoners are given “vocational training.” Yet the workplace conditions are often appalling, and the transfer of skills to the private sector is dubious.
http://occasionalplanet.org/2015/12/01/u-s-companies-make-a-killing-off-prison-slave-labor/
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."
