Laura M. Cuevas Meléndez: Building from Within: How Two Female Prisoners Survived Incarceration
Laura M. Cuevas Meléndez is a junior at the University of Kentucky and has majors in Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies and Spanish Language and Linguistics. She was born and raised in Puerto Rico and started her college career in Puerto Rico before transferring to UK in 2018, after Hurricane Maria. She is expected to complete her undergraduate degrees in 2021. Her love for reading and writing led to her choice of majors. Additionally, she chose her second major as a way to be connected with her Puerto Rican roots while studying at UK. Majoring in Hispanic Studies has led her to understand different Latin-American cultures, their contribution to the world, and what it means to be a young Latina today.
While at the University of Kentucky, she has been able to be part of the Learning Lab team at the Special Collections Research Center and conducted research with the Kate Black Social Activism Papers. The collection of letters from two female inmates, Laura Whitehorn and Silvia Baraldini, caught Laura’s attention and prompted her to research women in prison, prison activism, and prison reform. The investigation sheds light on the work and lives of the female prisoners as activists and shows the hardships many female inmates face while incarcerated. Furthermore, it invites us to rethink how they are treated in our current prison system.
Laura's research using the Kate Black Social Activism Papers was selected for poster presentation at the National Conference of Undergraduate Research, to be held at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana, March 26-28, 2020. Her travel was funded by the University of Kentucky Libraries, Chellgren Center for Undergraduate Excellence, and Office of Undergraduate Research.
Research Abstract: Building from Within: How Two Female Prisoners Survived Incarceration
While severe isolation, lack of sunlight, and sensory deprivation tactics were employed during the time Silvia Baraldini and Laura Whitehorn were incarcerated at the federal women’s prison in Lexington, Kentucky, during the 1980s, both of these women maintained their basic humanity and spirit by creating educational opportunities for fellow inmates, advocating for improved conditions, and sharing their experiences through letter writing. They each wrote hundreds of letters to friends, family, and other social activists concerned with their plight. Using the large collection of letters dating from 1987 to 2000 that Baraldini and Whitehorn wrote to the University of Kentucky archivist Kate Black, which now form part of the Kate Black Social Activism Papers at the University of Kentucky Libraries Special Collections Research Center, this research will explore the work, activity, and mental health of these women during their incarceration. Whitehorn was concerned with health education, especially regarding the burgeoning health crisis of HIV and AIDS and Baraldini advocated for reform of current incarceration tactics, like the High Security Unit in the Lexington prison. Because of Baraldini’s effort with the support of Amnesty International and the ACLU, the High Security Unit at Lexington’s Federal Correctional Institution was shut down in 1988. This research will also evaluate studies on how prison systems treat women prisoners differently than male prisoners, whether they receive more extreme punishments, and the nature of those punishments. In light of the current prison system, how do the examples of Baraldini and Whitehorn serve to help women maintain their humanity while incarcerated.
