Richard McKay wins Larry J. Hackman Research Residency Award at the New York State Archives
Leon “Struggle” Davis, Kareem Kevin Brooks, Richard McKay, and Reginald T. Qualls examine an early-twentieth-century admission register from the Elmira Reformatory at the New York State Archives in July 2024. Photo credit: Amy Lee.
Richard McKay has been awarded a 2024-25 Larry J. Hackman Research Residency Award by the New York State Archives. His proposal, “Carceral Sickness, ‘Clean Slate’: Towards Inclusive Research with New York State Correctional Facility Records,” was developed in partnership with Hudson Link for Higher Education in Prison, an organisation based in Ossining, New York, which provides college education, life skills, and reentry support to currently and formerly incarcerated people. In addition to supporting research for his next book, the residency has enabled Richard to recruit a team of three talented co-researchers from Hudson Link’s community - Leon “Struggle” Davis, Kareem Kevin Brooks, and Reginald T. Qualls - to conduct exploratory archival research using prison records from a century ago. Following a productive summer of archival investigation in Albany, New York, the Carceral Sickness Squad made three presentations sharing their preliminary findings, including one to current Hudson Link students inside Sing Sing Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison. Richard and his co-researchers will continue to meet virtually as they develop their work into a co-authored publication.