“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood” – Martin Luther King Jr.
As children we are fascinated by ghost stories, myths and fairy-tales; captivated by old legends and family yarns from back in the good old days. But one story you might not have heard is that of the chain gangs. Perhaps you’ve seen a film about them, like Cool Hand Luke with Paul Newman, or Oh Brother Where Art Thou with George Clooney? Chain gangs are neither myth nor fairy-tale; those lines of prisoners performing forced labour have always been a part of life in the American south – especially in the State of Georgia, where the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners who found themselves on the wrong side of the law might end up sharing a bunk. Life was harsh in the chain gang camps; so harsh that each one was known as a “little Alcatraz.”
Their story begins with the slave industry, which had prospered in North America for almost two hundred years before being was snuffed out by the Civil War. Men and women had been captured in their native lands, chained and shipped off to be sold to the rich landowners of the New World. They were clapped in irons and sold on slave ships, into a life of servitude and forced labour. The plantation masters used chains to imprison and transport their slaves. After the Civil War the South’s penitentiary system was left in ruins, but shackles remained in plentiful supply – and so it was that the chain gang was born into the American penal system following the Confederacy’s defeat. One end of the chain was fastened to a cannonball or a wagon wheel, and the other to the prisoner’s heel; he would then be deposited in a public place so law-abiding folks could watch him perform his forced labour. Criminals were hired out to work in the fields, the mines, the railroads or on public developments; the former governor Joseph Brown had rented out 300 prisoners for 8 cents a day to build the W&ARR, the Texas locomotive. Indeed, the prisoner rental system was so successful that jailhouses themselves became all but irrelevant. Prior to 1900, the issue of asking the taxpayer to fund state-run prisons was neatly avoided by transforming jails into chain gangs, which could be rented out for private profit. The flexible chains provided ample mobility for forced labour, while the prisoners’ lodgings, food, confinement and security were the responsibility of the renter. This would prove to be a powerful antidote to the economic issues faced by the post-war south, where labour was no longer free. By 1908, a system of "prison farms” had been developed along the highways of Georgia, putting an end to the practice of private prisoner rental between companies.
Georgia’s chain gangs are the story of a dark past; one of cruel treatment, cover-ups, merciless overseers, bureaucratic corruption and media investigations. People from that part of the world used to call them “convict dumps.” Some of the convicts were “supervisors”, a position they could earn through good behaviour. The work was long and hard, with prisoners often toiling fourteen hours a day. The gangs were transported to the work sites and spent their days breaking rocks, tilling the earth and clearing the fields. They wore striped uniforms and ate baked beans, corn bread, onions, cold fish and water. Through it all they remained shackled, singing as they worked. They took off their caps and bowed their heads low when the guards or the camp warden came around, and were not allowed to look these men in the eyes when they spoke.
“We been diggin’ fourteen hours nah!” one prisoner muttered. “I can’t take no more, I'm done for!”
“You getting paid, aintcha? Rather be a slave like your daddy? Governor’s givin’ ya 85 cents a day for nigger work.”
“You think you can last ten years out here?”
“Don’t worry ‘bout me! I already saved me a few bucks since I robbed the county jail. And tonight I get to have me a woman for my good behaviour. Warden told me so. Anyway, I ain’t gonna do no ten years. I ain’t black, so the governor’ll let me out early. Once a nigger, always a slave!”
Alan Alfredo Geday