Chain Gangs in America: A Shadow of Slavery
Although slavery was officially ended in 1865, American chain gangs are a mirror of the dehumanization and forced labor slavery entailed. A chain gang is a group of prisoners who are chained together and forced to undergo difficult manual labor.Centuries before, ships sent hundreds of Africans to America, a process known as the slave trade. On these ships, slaves were chained together for days, an image which is reflected in the chain gang. Slave labor was integral for the economies American South until slavery was finally abolished in the 13th amendment as a result of the civil war.
Although slavery was legally abolished, those in the South searched for ways they could legally continue the cheap labor and dehumanization of African Americans, recreating slavery in a sense. African Americans were forced into labor contracts which would trap them in a cycle of poverty and debt, a technically legal continuation of the cheap labor Southerners had access to during slavery. An even more striking resemblance to slavery existed in chain gangs.
Freedmen were frequently sent to prison for petty theft, unemployment, violation of a labor contract, or were even arrested under false charges. Unable to pay fines, freedmen were imprisoned and forced to participate in the convict labor system known as the chain gang. 90% of convicts in the chain gang were African Americans, demonstrating the bias that existed against Blacks after the abolition of slavery.
Evidently, justice for African Americans would not come until long after the abolition of slavery and still has ways to go.
Sources:
https://scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1626&context=californialawreview
https://www.pbs.org/tpt/slavery-by-another-name/themes/chain-gangs/
I really appreciate how you talked about how you talked about all of the steps that the Southerners took in order to imprison the freedmen so that they could use free labor again. Is this still common in prisons? I thought it was but now I'm less sure.
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ReplyDeleteI found it interesting how you talked about chain gangs/their bias as a way to recreate the brutal conditions of slavery in the South. Chain gangs were super brutal due to how hazardous the use of chains were. For example, in Georgia the chains weighed 20 pounds during the early 1900s. This resulted in shackle sores (ulcers from the iron being ground against their skin) and the risk of Gangrene. Additionally, if one person fell, many other people would get hurt too. Additionally, the prisoners worked at gunpoint under whips. There was so much brutality and violence associated with it that the chain gang was abolished in every state by the 1950s.
ReplyDeleteThe convict labor system developed due to the Black Codes, which placed much more blacks than whites in prison for the first time ever. Convict leasing was developed to allow white slave plantation owners and companies in the South to purchase prisoners to live on their property and work for them. The system was extremely abusive and the death rate of prisoners leased to railroad companies between 1877 and 1879 was 45% in South Carolina. The system's notoriety resulted in a massive reform and abolition movement, and every state had abolished convict leasing by the 1930s. Due to the removal of convict leasing, more and more prisoners were forced to work in chain gangs, which had originated due to a massive road development project in Georgia during the 1890s and quickly spread to other states.