About ten years ago, Robert Payne, an inmate at Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville, was discussing prison conditions with the chaplain, Jeannie Alexander.
According to Alexander, Payne said nothing would change while the state constitution’s ban on slavery had an exception.
Despite her background in law, Alexander didn’t know what Payne was talking about. Payne directed Alexander to the section of the Tennessee state constitution exempting those “duly convicted” of a crime from the ban on slavery — a clause which is “hidden right out in the open,” Alexander said by phone Monday.
Disturbed, Alexander recalls matter-of-factly saying the constitutional text would have to be changed. Though in agreement, Payne was a bit skeptical, Alexander said.
“Uh, OK, chaplain,” she remembered him saying.