State officials say an attempt by prison reform and inmate advocacy groups to launch a nationwide prison strike only resulted in a brief work stoppage at one Alabama prison, though it had greater success elsewhere in the country.

The 24-hour strike Sept. 9 at William C. Holman Correctional Facility in Atmore was one of a number of coordinated stoppages across the U.S. that day.

Described by advocates and inmates as an act of civil disobedience, the Holman action was precipitated by a number of previous strikes, including simultaneous stoppages in May at Holman and Elmore Correctional Facility in Elmore County and one at Springville's St. Clair Correctional Facility in 2014. Warden Carter Davenport and a guard were stabbed during a March prisoner riot at Holman.

The Sept. 9 protest began at 12 a.m. that day and ended 24 hours later at 12 a.m. Sept. 10. Other concurrent protests in other states lasted longer, with inmates in 20 prisons in 11 states striking, and some protests through at least Sept. 16, according to The Intercept.

The Sept. 9 Holman strike was carried out by about 30 workers in the prison's kitchen, where "[a]pproximately 30 inmates (10 per meal shift) did not prepare the meals for the day," and in its "tag plant," which saw 35 inmates refuse to make license plates that day, according to Bob Horton, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Corrections.

"Inmates did not give any demands to prison officials at Holman," Horton said via email Monday.

But representatives of the Free Alabama Movement prison reform group and other inmate rights organizations described this month's strikes as aimed at getting prison systems across the nation to pay workers more and put an end to what they describe as the "new slavery" of today's prison labor system.

Melvin Ray, a Free Alabama Movement member and inmate at Bessemer's W.E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, told Mother Jones that the problem is not that the inmates have jobs, but that he believes their hard work is being taken advantage of.

"Work is good for anyone," he said. "The problem is that our work is producing services that we're being charged for, that we don't get any compensation from."

Horton said that inmates who work via the state's prison labor initiative, called Alabama Correctional Industries, are paid between 25 and 75 cents per hour, a fraction of the state's minimum wage of $7.25.

Ray decried the low pay in an interview with AL.com in April 2014.

"We don't want to be slaves for this system," he said. "If we made mistakes and you want us to be here, give us the corrections we seek."

But the pay is actually higher than that offered in some other states. In Arkansas, Georgia and Texas prisons, for instance, inmates do not receive a wage in exchange for their work, while federal prisoners get between 12 and 40 cents per hour, Mother Jones reported.

Prisoners' rights and questions about whether inmates are being taken advantage of by federal and state authorities as well as corporations that rely on cheap prison labor have become hot-button issues in recent years.

The 2010 book "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness" by Michelle Alexander helped bring the topic into the national spotlight by raising questions about the numbers of Americans behind bars and the racial disparities in today's prisons.

But many prisoners in Alabama and beyond contend that major problems still face the nation's inmates, and that strikes and other forms of nonviolent protests are some of the only ways they can hope to raise enough awareness to make a real difference.

Ray told Mother Jones he believes that prisoners have a collective voice that could change the way the nation's prison system is run, if only inmates would come together to make their voices heard.

"[N]ot only do we have a significant role in our incarceration, we have a significant opportunity to bring about our own freedom," he said.