The Portal to Texas History 2026 Research Fellowship Awardee
Halee Robinson
Project Title
They Taken Him Away From Us: Race, Punishment, and the Intimate Histories of the Texas Prison System, 1865-1912
Project Description
They Taken Him Away From Us: Race, Punishment, and the Intimate Histories of the Texas Prison System, 1865-1912 explores how transformations in the Texas prison system impacted the social ties of free and incarcerated Black, ethnic Mexican, Indigenous, and white people between 1865 and 1912. This book examines the lived experiences of and relationships among three groups: incarcerated people, incarcerated people’s families, and incarcerated people’s communities. It argues that free people who encountered the Texas prison system through the system’s effects on their social ties defined freedom and justice through their abilities to cultivate, support, and participate in their social ties without intervention from the state.
Biography
Dr. Halee R. Robinson is an Assistant Professor of History and Race, Ethnicity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She is currently working on her first book, They Taken Him Away From Us: Race, Punishment, and the Intimate Histories of the Texas Prison System, 1865-1912. The book explores how the Texas prison system impacted the social ties of free and incarcerated Black, ethnic Mexican, Indigenous, and white people and how these intimate encounters consequently shaped the meanings of freedom, justice, and punishment after the Civil War. She received her PhD in History from Princeton University.
