We’ve seen prison life portrayed in countless films. Escape from Alcatraz, Cool Hand Luke, The Green Mile, Shawshank Redemption, and others show just how tough life can be behind American bars. Midnight Express and Papillon show the same for other countries. Hollywood is known for its exaggerations, but, in the case of all of these prison films, they may actually fall short of just how tough life was in Georgia’s Rock Quarry Prison. On the basis of how far men were willing to go to get out of this place, the Rock Quarry may have been the worst of them all.
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In 1949, Georgia announced plans to construct a rock quarry prison, a place essentially designated to break the will of its most hardened criminals, then known as incorrigibles. Governor Herman Talmadge said it would “be of immense value in carrying out a successful reformation program in the state.” Slated to be on the location of a former CCC Camp (Civilian Conservation Corps, a New Deal program designed by the FDR administration) near Buford, the site was next to a rock quarry, in which prisoners would work to provide stone for Georgia’s roads.
Other quarry-type prisons existed around the U.S., but this one was unique in several aspects. The budget for the approximately $1 million facility was only $90,000. The savings would be realized by using prisoners with various skill sets for the design and construction. Even before the building process began, the institution was called “The Rock.” Soon after its 1949 opening, it would become known as “Little Alcatraz.”
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Prisoners supplied the labor to build the prison but also were charged with designing the locking systems, cells, and guard towers. The plumbing was done by an inmate serving a life sentence. A burglar was the surveyor. Thieves and sex criminals constructed the electrical systems. A hog thief forged the bars. The man who built the doors was nine years into a 25 to 40-year sentence for receiving stolen goods. All worked there in the hope of their deeds getting them housed in prisons away from the Quarry.
Escape attempts started during construction, but the inmates were always captured quickly. Once returned, the escapees could ponder their futures with long stretches in solitary confinement.
The inmates worked six days a week from 6 am until 6 pm, receiving a two-hour lunch break and two half-hour breaks during the day. Georgia temperatures were often in the upper 90s during summer, and inmates were tightly controlled. Permission was required for restroom breaks, for example. Inmates who headed toward the restroom without first asking permission would experience a bullet striking just in front of their paths, shot from the guards 100 yards up on the rim of the Quarry. Guards on the quarry floor carried sticks, one inch thick, used to “keep prisoners in line.” Surviving a year in the Quarry without incident would result in a transfer to another prison.
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Complaints of their treatment began as soon as the facility opened. Hunger strikes were common, although they seldom accomplished anything other than a trip to solitary for the strikers. The first high visibility occurrence took place on Christmas Day, 1951. Led by four inmates who had recently attempted escape, thirty prisoners attempted to sever their Achilles tendons with a smuggled razor in an effort to get out of the grueling work regiment and protest the strip searches they incurred when returning to the prison after working in the Quarry. They were also claiming brutality on the part of the guards, a lack of reading materials and radios, and restrictive visiting periods. Ten succeeded, according to Warden Hubert Smith. Doctors were brought in to sew together the damaged tendons, and the offenders were placed in solitary.
The incident was covered in newspapers around the country. Prison officials discounted their claims, saying they only wanted to get out of work. Reporters were invited to visit the prison by the State Board of Corrections, but they were not allowed to see or speak with the injured inmates. A Georgia Legislative Committee probe into the event gave the prison and its leadership a clean bill of health. The committee issued a statement, saying, “We find that the rules and regulations are not too harsh for a prison of this nature since every man here is a maximum security risk. They praised the warden and his staff for their excellent work and expeditious handling of the rebellion.
Over the following years, the prison received excellent ratings from administrators, yet complaints about prisoner treatment continued. The worst of criminals were still sent there, and escapes and captures continued to happen.
Tensions again reached a boiling point on July 30, 1956. Thirty-six inmates, around 3:30 pm at the end of a designated break period, placed their legs across two rocks, inches apart, stuffed rags in their mouths so that their screams wouldn’t be heard, and used the ten-pound sledgehammers from their quarry work to break their own legs. Later, other inmates would allege that three prisoners swung the hammers on their willing victims.
The warden was notified, and buses carried the injured back to the prison compound, and the prison doctor was summoned. Other inmates were assigned to cut boards for splints. Several of the inmates suffered compound fractures. Ambulances were called to take the ten in the worst condition to the state prison hospital in Reidsville. The seven black and twenty-nine white inmates involved were given misconduct reports, and a charge of self-mutilation was added to their records. A Georgia Department of Corrections spokesman was quoted in the Atlanta newspaper as saying these men “were not Sunday School boys.”
The following day, another five inmates followed their fellow inmates, hitting their legs with sledgehammers, with two actually breaking their legs. All who attempted on both days lost credit for any good time they had, plus faced the maximum term in the Rock Quarry, twelve months before being eligible for transfer to another facility. Mailing and visitor privileges were taken away, and most were sent to solitary, with a bread and water-only diet.
A subsequent investigation, like the one five years earlier, placed no blame on the prison’s policies or staff. The committee actually recommended tightening discipline. It did reveal that in the previous months, a dozen or so inmates suffered broken legs, now thought to have been self-inflicted. The prison’s second in command, Deputy Warden Doyle Smith, known as “Boss Doyle,” accused of beating inmates, was not found to be guilty of the charges but was recommended to be transferred, which he soon was.
