In 1944, future
civil rights leader
Bayard Rustin, then 32 years old and serving a three-year sentence for his political (
socialist) and religious (
Quaker) refusal of
the draft in
World War II, helped lead a
nonviolent campaign for racial integration of prison cell blocks and dining halls, including a
hunger strike. The campaign was partially successful, although Rustin served time in
solitary confinement and was eventually subjected to a punitive transfer to
Lewisburg Penitentiary. On December 5, 2008, former
National Football League receiver
Mark Ingram Sr. failed to report to FCI Ashland after being sentenced to 92 months on
bank fraud and
money laundering charges. Ingram, who was in and out of jail after his playing days ended in 1996, had already been granted a delay to watch his son, Mark Ingram Jr., finish his freshman season as a running back at the University of Alabama. Ingram asked for a second delay to watch his son play in the
2009 Sugar Bowl in New Orleans between Utah and Alabama. When the judge said no, Ingram went on the lam. US Marshals arrested him a month later in a Michigan motel room, two hours before the Sugar Bowl kickoff. He was on the bed watching the pre-game show on television. Ingram subsequently had two years added to his sentence. He was held at the
Federal Correctional Institution, Yazoo City, a low-security facility in Mississippi, and was released in 2015. On May 13, 2014, local media outlets reported that 46-year-old James Lewis, a former correctional officer at FCI Ashland, had been sentenced to 15 months in federal prison. Lewis had pleaded guilty to conspiring with inmate Gary Musick and Musick's girlfriend, Cindy Gates, to bring marijuana and nude photographs into the prison between December 2010 and February 2012. Musick was convicted of
conspiracy while Gates pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor conspiracy charge and was sentenced to probation. ==Notable inmates (current and former)==