Saturday's closing of Stone Mountain Park and the subsequent small demonstration in Stone Mountain prompted internet circulation over the weekend of a photo of then-Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton in front of a group of black prisoners. PRISM can't vouch for this particular picture, we didn't take it, we don't know its provenance.
However, President Bill Clinton was photographed in front of a group of mostly black probationers at the Stone Mountain Boot Camp on March 2, 1992, the day before an 11-state Super Tuesday primary with four Demoratic presidential candidates still in the race. California Gov. Jerry Brown campaigned at the Georgia Capitol the same day.
Later in the day, after seeing the photo, Brown said Clinton and U.S. Senator Sam Nunn looked like "a couple of white guys standing in front of them like colonial masters," and sending the signal, "Don't worry, we'll keep them in their place." In the heat of the campaign, Brown said the probationers looked like "a bunch of Willie Hortons."
Clinton responded that the probationers were getting education and drug rehabilitation and that he supported this type of program. At the time, there were almost a dozen prison boot camps around the state of Georgia. The Georgia Department of Corrections still operates a Probation Boot Camp in Forsyth that can put up to 100 male felons aged 17-30 in a military regimen.
