hundreds of incarcerated men forced to work for free as part of the “Hoe Squad” at the Cummins Unit, the Arkansas Division of Correction’s (ADC) oldest and largest prison.
“I’m on my hands and knees, and I’m planting onions in this field. I looked up and the only thing that I could see was white men on horses with shotguns, and as I looked around me, all I could see in my mind were Black men on their knees planting onions. We were literally slaves.”
https://prismreports.org/2026/07/14/prison-farm-forced-labor-arkansas/
There are currently more than 660 prisons in the U.S. with agricultural operations,... making prisons $10 million a year in crop production sold to Tyson, etc.
The state first bought the Cummins property in 1902 to operate as Arkansas’ first working prison farm. From the time of its opening until the 1930s, the prison solely incarcerated Black Americans, who were required to pick cotton.
Before it was the Cummins Unit, the prison was the site of two plantations. In 1873, eight years after slavery ended, Arkansas codified a convict-lease system that allowed individuals and companies to pay the prison to “lease” incarcerated people to work in factories and mines and on farms and railroads. The workers were not compensated for their labor.
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