{"id":649,"date":"2024-05-01T20:11:00","date_gmt":"2024-05-01T20:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/?p=649"},"modified":"2025-05-07T03:44:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T03:44:30","slug":"cedar-banks-prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinforsyth.net\/ELMAC\/cedar-banks-prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Cedar Banks \u2014 the women’s prison that never was"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A variation of this article, in tweet-thread form, was originally published in November 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Image source: Google Street View.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Tucked away in the woods southeast of Okemos, on a roughly hundred-acre lot next to the Red Cedar River, stands the transmitter antenna of Michigan State University’s WKAR-TV and WKAR-FM radio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is not odd for M.S.U. to own a piece of land so close to, yet separate from, the main body of campus. After all, the Agricultural College received many pieces of government-controlled land in the 1855 and 1863 land grants. An 1859 map shows at least a dozen parcels totalling more than one thousand acres in Meridian Township alone, not including campus itself.1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, however, is not one of those parcels. This particular piece of land came to be owned by Michigan State in a unique way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1917, the state legislature enacted a law to establish the “Michigan State Training School for Women.” The name was, to be frank, both optimistic and euphemistic: it was in fact a reformatory, a model women’s prison. As its proponents explained, “the aim will be to train women who have been convicted of crime, in suitable industrial arts, farming, domestic science, etc., for the purpose of reclaiming them and making them self-supporting.”2<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, it was intended to provide vocational training as a form of rehabilitation. Yet the Act establishing the institution had no official mention of what it meant to be a “training school,” and no provision for such facilities—which seems a particularly significant detail to omit.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Governor Albert Sleeper signed the bill into law in April 1917, but waited until December of that year to appoint a five-member board of control, three of whom were women. All five were Republicans like Sleeper, and active in the party:<\/p>\n\n\n\n