Executive Director, Brent D. Glass, on the 50th-anniversary of Sing Sing Thanksgiving
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Fifty years ago on Thanksgiving, an extraordinary concert took place at Sing Sing Prison featuring two of America’s greatest musicians, Joan Baez and B.B. King.  They performed in the prison chapel before an appreciative crowd of more than a thousand incarcerated men under the watchful eyes dozens of prison guards and officials. 
 
The opening act was a little known group, Voices of East Harlem, who almost stole the show with their spirited performance and a moving rendition of To Be Young, Gifted and Black. Joan Baez’ voice, always magnificent, soared with emotion when she sang Bob Dylan’s classic I Shall Be Released. Her sister Mimi Farina joined her to sing Viva Mi Patria Bolivia that brought cheers from a diverse mix of white, Black and Brown men.
 
But the event belonged to the incomparable B.B. King who brought his 20-piece band--including his treasured guitar Lucille--through prison security.  His solo introduction was powerful and prayerful.  In one song, he offered inspiration and compassion; other numbers were raucous and brought wild cheering and laughter. Clearly, King knew his audience and connected with them with what he later recalled as one of his greatest performances.
 
How do we know this? David Hoffman, a filmmaker living in Ossining at the time, was teaching a filmmaking class at Sing Sing and worked the incarcerated men in his class to produce the concert.  In addition, he and his students assembled a 27-member crew to record the concert.  The result is more than a concert film. Hoffman and his team present a vivid portrait of life at Sing Sing in what turned out to be a turning point in its history and a new chapter in the history of incarceration in the US—a period of racial mass incarceration.  The Sing Sing Prison Museum is now documenting that story as part of a larger interpretive planning initiative.

On November 3, the museum screened David Hoffman’s film, Sing Sing Thanksgiving, for a full house at the Jacob Burns Film Center.  As the credits roll with an original song by Joan Baez, I noticed that the name of the prison had changed to the Ossining Correctional Facility. In the 1980s, the name changed again to the Sing Sing Correctional Facility and that name remains today. Whatever name you use, it is still Sing Sing, a place of singular importance in American history.
 
Brent D. Glass
Executive Director
Sing Sing Prison Museum

Sing Sing Prison Museum's Executive Director, Brent D. Glass, recently published a post for the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). Shared here with permission: 

WHAT WE'RE READING: This month we are honored to feature an autobiography "The Urban Underworld in Late Nineteenth-Century New York: The Autobiography of George Appo," by former Sing Sing incarcerated individual, George Appo, and edited by Timothy J. Gilfoyle. The book follows the first-hand account of Appo, a pickpocket and con man, who spent his early years in various penitentiaries and prisons in New York. He recalls his time in Sing Sing Prison, providing insight into corruption, corporal punishment, and incarceration. 

Appo, an orphaned Chinese American, lived in the Five Points neighborhood of New York City. His upbringing taught him to do whatever was necessary to survive. At the age of 15, Appo was caught pickpocketing, charged, and sentenced to time on the school ship called "Mercury." Throughout his life, Appo was in and out of different prisons until the early 20th century. 

His account of Sing Sing gives an insider perspective on prison life during the late 1800s and early 1900s. He describes a system of informal entitlements created by prison guards: the incarcerated people could pay and bribe guards to receive newspapers, tobacco, and even could be exempt from hard labor. Appo also discusses another administrative system in which, to cut costs, prison administrators would assign office work to inmates. This allowed them to manipulate records and change release dates for other inmates. 

Through his description of corruption and corporal punishment, Appo raises the question: What is the purpose of prisons? Is it to reform incarcerated individuals? Is it to separate them from the general public? Is it to take advantage of cheap labor?

Read Appo's autobiography here: https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Underworld-Late-Nineteenth-Century-York-ebook/dp/B07L9F65LJ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2VSHTTR4UEO0F&keywords=george+appo&qid=1659373572&sprefix=george+appo%2Caps%2C63&sr=8-1

My cousin Shari contacted me recently with interesting news. “Did you know,” she asked, “that a member of our family was incarcerated at Sing Sing Prison?” I had no idea. She sent a copy of the January 8, 1920 commutation for Matthew Gardner, who was convicted of third degree arson the year before.  I checked the Find-A-Grave entry for great-uncle Matty to confirm that I might have a connection to the history of Sing Sing through this distant relative.  Further research showed that yes indeed, Matthew Gardner was the brother of my maternal grandmother Irene Gardner.  He died in 1930 at the age of 36.  My mother was only three when he died and never mentioned him or his notorious past.  

The events that led to his imprisonment were described in the April 1, 1919 edition of the Brooklyn Daily Times.  On January 28, while he and his brother, Harry, went to a show with their wives, his paint and hardware store at 4170 Jamaica Avenue in Queens , New York (also his home address) caught fire and sustained extensive damage.  An investigation quickly revealed that Matty offered to pay his partner $1000 to set the blaze in the hope of collecting $19,000 in insurance.  He received a sentence of 3 to 6 years and arrived at Sing Sing Prison on April 3, 1919. In January 1920, Governor Al Smith commuted his sentence noting “that Gardner has a wife and a child twenty months old that need his assistance.” 

What do we know about Matty Gardner’s relatively brief stay at Sing Sing?  He lived in the old cellblock where the cells measured 3 feet 3 inches wide, 7 feet long and 6 feet 6 inches high. Without indoor plumbing, the men used the same bucket system that had been in place for nearly a century. A solitary light bulb swung overhead and on rare occasions a faint breeze came through the large vertical windows that had been carved out of the stone walls enclosing the cellblock.  Did he buy cigarettes at the Mutual Welfare League store?  Did he go to movies that were shown in the chapel?  Did he meet Charles Chapin, the former newspaper editor convicted of murder, who later become known as the Rose Man of Sing Sing for creating the prison’s extensive gardens? Did he meet Owney Madden, nicknamed “The Killer,” who led New York’s Gopher Gang from Hell’s Kitchen?  Did he avoid getting sick with the Spanish flu that had swept through Sing Sing in 1918 and 1919?  Did he attend synagogue on High Holy days with the estimated 150 Jewish men incarcerated at that time? 
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Did he meet Lewis E. Lawes who began serving as Warden on January 1, 1920? Lawes became the most famous warden in America, leading a series of reforms to improve conditions and morale.  Throughout his 21-year tenure, he secured funding for a major building campaign that modernized the facility.  One reform he could not accomplish was to abolish the death penalty which he considered a useless and barbaric form of punishment.  In spite of Lawes’s opposition more than 300 executions took place while he was warden, the first being Vincenzo Esposito on January 8, 1920, the same day that Governor Smith commuted Matthew Gardners’s sentence.  
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The Sing Sing Prison Museum has been awarded an Infrastructure and Capacity Building Challenge Grant by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for $364,746. The funds will be used to restore the historic 1936 Powerhouse into a multi-purpose program and exhibition space, to be used for lectures, films, performances, seminars, displays, and conferences related to criminal justice and the American penal system. 

“The Sing Sing Prison Museum has a singular opportunity to demonstrate that history is a resource that helps us understand our own times,” said Brent Glass, the Museum’s Executive Director. “I am very pleased that NEH funding will enable us to explore some of the core issues of the humanities.” 

The Museum’s grant comes at a time when the Village of Ossining is undergoing a Comprehensive Plan that includes the Museum as part of its waterfront revitalization, economic development, and cultural and historic resources initiatives. 
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NEH Infrastructure and Capacity Building grants encourage private philanthropy to match federal funds and leverage private investment in the nation’s cultural institutions. The Museum is required to raise $1.1 million dollars to match NEH funding. 
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While our Museum may not be open yet, there’s always a lot of action going on as we work towards our goal of welcoming you all into our doors. This month we heard about an exciting item that was up for sale and acquired a baseball signed at Sing Sing Prison by the New York Yankees in 1929. We can confirm that it features the signatures of Baseball Hall of Fame Inductees Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Earle Combs and Bill Dickey.
 
With her extensive knowledge in auctions, Assistant Director Hilary Strimple led the effort to verify the baseball’s authenticity and was able to secure it during the bidding. We’re excited to have this item in our collection because it represents so much more than just celebrity and is linked to the story of prison reform.
 
Read more about baseball at Sing Sing Prison and the Mutual Welfare League here!