Established 2023
Academic Scholarship and Exchange in The Eastern Echo
Monday, November 11, 2024
Imani Nkrumah Ardayfio
Introduction
The Eastern Echo was a magazine created in the 1950s and 60s in the Eastern State Penitentiary. The magazine was edited, written, illustrated, and printed by incarcerated people within the Philadelphia prison. The magazine explored many topics, including artwork, poetry, philosophy, and perspectives on the prison system. In the Fall of 1959, the magazine featured an article by Dr. Negley K. Teeters, a professor at Temple University known for his work in sociology, criminology, and anthropology, all centered around prison systems. Dr. Teeters' contribution adds a unique dimension to the magazine. It shows that the Eastern Echo was an academic forum where scholarship and lived experience intersected, creating a unique dialogue that perhaps challenges common perceptions of legitimate knowledge and the direction in which knowledge is typically exchanged. Beyond its value as a magazine, the Eastern Echo should be seen as a place where incarcerated people could interpret and edit current academic scholarship in a way that suited them.
Dr. Negley K. Teeters' Contribution
Dr. Teeters's article "On Public Executions" explores early eighteenth-century penal codes and practices. His work began in 1692, when the colony was founded, and continued until 1834. He tracks how public execution shifted to more private affairs within a jail. Interestingly, this article is unique within the publication because although it is about punishment and crime, it is not a contemporary paper and is only tangentially related to the people who are editing and engaging with the material within Eastern State, unlike many other articles and work within the magazine which cover more contemporary topics. This means that people in the Eastern State Penitentiary were engaged in historical scholarship with leading academic professors. The Eastern Echo could also be considered a pedagogical tool, offering inmates who perhaps had not gotten a chance to develop critical thinking skills and engage with historical narratives that would usually be taught in universities.
Knowledge Production and Editorial Choices
Prisons have historically been sites of knowledge production. Scholars often extract insights from prison contexts and use these insights to publish to a scholarly audience, but rarely reciprocate by contributing to knowledge within prison walls. Dr. Teeters' participation in this publication might indicate a deliberate attempt to directly engage with the prison population in a way that differs from the traditional flow of knowledge. The introduction to the article in the Eastern State says, "Dr. Teeters complete list of public executions in the Commonwealth and a narrative will appear in the Lancaster County Historical Society Journal, Winter Issue." The Lancaster County Historical Society Journal published the article in the Spring of 1960, meaning that the inmates at Eastern State Penitentiary engaged with this material before most people and could publish it first. This exemplifies how the Eastern Echo pushed back at a conventional hierarchy where prisons and prisoners are subjects of a study rather than a primary site of academic engagement. The role of the magazine's editors was crucial in this knowledge exchange. The version of the article published in the Lancaster County Historical Society Journal was longer and more complex than the one printed in the Eastern Echo. The prison publication condensed the article into three digestible pages, incorporating some graphics, varied text styles, and shorter sections. This editorial process reflects an effort to adapt academic material to suit the undoubtedly varied educational backgrounds of the inmates, demonstrating the editors' prowess in making scholarly work more accessible and engaging for their audience. The beginning section of the article in both versions highlights the crime of Judith Roe. Yet, it is clear that the same introduction and storyline are introduced in different ways with shorter and more pointed sentences. The stark imagery of the noose on the title page of Teeters’ article is a powerful visual choice, immediately confronting the readers with the gravity of the topic being introduced and setting the tone for the work like the publication in The Lancaster County Historical Society Journal did not. This process reflects the editors’ editorial skill and suggests an act of reclamation, positioning the inmates as consumers and knowledge producers.
Another difference in the formality of the publications is that the Eastern Echo addresses the professor as Negley K. Teeters, with a notable exclusion of a title expressing his doctorate or career as a professor. This choice is also reflected in the table of contents of the article. It is not clear whether there is an intentional choice to leave out Dr. Teeter’s title, but it does contribute to an atmosphere that values diverse perspectives in an equal and less intimidating way. When reading the table of contents, it is impossible to distinguish between a professor like Dr. Teeters, someone who is incarcerated, or a warden until reading further into their particular article. As a result, the Eastern Echo was a forum in which academic scholarship was leveled with the perspective of inmates, whose philosophies and musings on prison systems and rehabilitation were equally acknowledged and essential to the editors.
References Eastern Echo Fall 1958 The Lancaster County Historical Society Journal 1960 (edited with Grammarly)
