Please join us for the dedication of a new Georgia historical marker about Georgia’s State Prison Farm (1899-1937).
The dedication is public and will take place on Tuesday, May 19, at 2:00 p.m., at Walter B. Williams Park in Milledgeville, Georgia. Parking is available onsite.
The historical marker reads:
Georgia’s State Prison Farm (1899-1937)
After the Civil War, Georgia established the State Prison Farm at this site, creating it for women, juveniles, and men unable to perform convict-leasing or chain gang labor. Like other states and private prisons nationwide, the prison focused on reforming inmates through daily hard labor and used the inmates to address labor shortages following emancipation. The agriculture-based, 4,000-acre facility became self-sufficient and relied upon its predominantly African-American inmates’ labor. In 1924 Georgia made electrocution the method of capital punishment, installing its first electric chair at the State Prison Farm. The facility closed in 1937 when a larger, federally-funded state prison opened in Reidsville. The men’s dormitory, which housed the electric chair and prisoners such as Leo Frank and Bill Miner, was the last standing structure until its demolition in 2018.
Erected by the Georgia Historical Society and Baldwin County Board of Commissioners