Reporting on "Torturing a Negro": Challenging Prison Violence and Frameworks of Transnational White Supremacy in the Tocsin

Abstract:

This essay examines reports of racialised violence endured by William King, an African American man who migrated to Australia and became ensnared in the Victoria prison system. His experiences of mistreatment at the hands of prison staff were made public in 1899 through a series of reports in the Toscin, a paper produced by a progressive collective in Melbourne. This article examines the textual tactics the Tocsin used to analyse King's case as well as the limits of its political writings. Though the Tocsin employed a range of geographical scales in its analysis of King's case, drawing together international campaigns into local conversations, the paper remained embedded in the logics of white supremacy. Its writers were thus unable to reimagine the structures of white supremacy from which they wrote to condemn the injustices King faced.