On July 12, 1947, the New York Times published an article with the headline “Five Convicts Slain in Break in Georgia.” It opened: “Five Negro convicts were shot to death and eight others were wounded, two critically, in an escape attempt at a state highway work camp today, Warden H. G. Worthy said. The article continued, relying heavily on the warden’s account of events.

The initial account of what happened at Anguilla Prison Camp on July 11, 1947 turned out to be remarkable after all: It was a complete lie.
What actually took place at Anguilla was a massacre.

Anguilla Prison Massacre is a set of two pamphlet-bound artist books, with enclosure. One of the components uses archival research and reproductions to walk the reader through the Anguilla Massacre. It uses archival material to show the incident as first reported, the letter sent by an incarcerated victim to the NAACP, the disbanding of the prison work camp on the GA road systems, the evidence and trial, and ultimately the not guilty verdict. The archival information is offered in the book as small versions of the archival document- a reproduction of the letter sent to the NAACP, a map of the Georgia state roads from 1946, the not guilty verdict.

The second component, A Mass Lynching in Georgia: Anguilla 1947, gives the historical background of Georgia that led up to the Anguilla Massacre- Jim Crowe laws, disenfranchisement of Black voters, state-sanctioned lynching and violence in and out of the prison. Mariame Kaba talks about her relationship to the material, how she has felt haunted by the massacre, as well as what grew from it – a collaborative project with artist Rachel Willis (and this project). She also connects this history to the murders of Black people at the hands of state violence.