Ryan Anthony Smith

Had a monster of a brunch with my folks. Approaching food coma.

The big 40 today. Have a job I love, in excellent health, wonderful family and friends. Very, very thankful.

Between a postal worker (my dad) and a middle school secretary (my mom), this house has enough gifted cookies, chocolate, peanut brittle, cupcakes, etc., to kill a man. Or, at least, we will find out. #homefortheholidays

The Alien and Sedition Act of 1798, the “Tariff of Abominations,” and the Connecticut Compromise are sexy again

In areas where county convict camps were operated, pushback from locals could be violent, especially during economic downturns (like in 1893) when jobs were scarce and lessees were seen as robbing free-world Arkansans of work and using convict labor, which was far cheaper, instead.

This also speaks to a hidden part of leasing: so many inmates were held on county convict farms or camps--rather than on state ones--where oversight was essentially nonexistent but where everyday Arkansans encountered/interacted with inmates, sometimes working alongside them, like in mines.

I've found so many instances of interracial cooperation (however tacit or informal) in opposing the convict lease system in Arkansas or holding those responsible for its most egregious sins. Here, a Black inmate was awarded $5,000 from lessees by an all-white jury in Little Rock (1893).

"In the freedom struggle story, Black people are seen as ordinary and heroic precisely /because/ they knew so little about law. But if that is so, then why, when a mass movement against racial injustice finally took hold in the 1950s, did so many Black people put their faith in law at all? (xviii)"

Folks really talked up Dylan Penningroth's _Before the Movement_ to me. They weren't lying. This book is radically altering how I think, teach, and research what constitutes "civil rights" and how African Americans asserted their rights and privileges on an almost daily basis.

New here, so I'll introduce myself: currently teaching history and African American studies @ Missouri State University. PhD candidate @ University of Arkansas (defending March 2026). Dissertation is a history of race, labor, and activism in the Arkansas penitentiary system from its origins to 1970.