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Chain Gangs

In the middle of the 19th century, the practice of chaining prisoners together while they worked became customary in England and Australia. The iron chains weighing from six to seven pounds were riveted together by blacksmiths, inspected daily to prevent tampering, and remained attached to prisoners for the length of their sentences, between six months and two years. From its inception, the rationale of chaining convicts transcended the utilitarian notion of security. Instead, chain gangs are spectacles of punishment; being chained—especially in public—is degrading and dehumanizing.

History

In the United States, following the Civil War, Reconstruction required manual labor to rebuild the South's economy and infrastructure. While convicts in the North worked in prison factory shops, their Southern counterparts—who were disproportionately black—labored outside prison walls on the plantations and in public works projects. During this time, chain gangs were widespread in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia where sentences ranged from a few weeks to 10 years. They were used extensively throughout the convict leasing system in the South where private businesses compensated the state for use of its prisoners. Prisoners wearing striped uniforms were chained together in crews of five to seven and transported to work sites in caged wagons holding up to 18 men. At night, all of the chains were attached to a steel rod running the length of the sleeping area.

During Reconstruction, chain gangs demonstrated the unbroken line between slavery and the use of convict slave labor. The appeal of chain gangs was not limited to free labor, it also satisfied the racist sentiment that blacks should be shackled to the land. Testimonies of brutality and oppression often surfaced from the Southern prison camps. It was even rumored that unlucky hitchhikers were arrested and railroaded to chain gangs, thus serving as a valuable source of free labor. Sadistic armed guards often took delight in shooting at the feet of prisoners. Deploying the lash, “whipping bosses”—akin to the slave driver on antebellum plantations—routinely disciplined prisoners on chain gangs. According to a corrections officials of that era: “A Negro is punished to ‘teach him respect for a white man,’ or for ‘inciting insurrection,’ or because he ‘tried to run away,’ or because ‘he is just a bad nigger’” (Barnes & Teeters, 1946, p. 631). Especially under intense heat, sick, malnutritioned, and injured convicts accused of malingering were typically whipped until they returned to work; even worse many prisoners were beaten to death and clandestinely buried in quicklime.

Punishment

The most brutal punishments imaginable were inflicted on members of the chain gangs who were assigned to road camps of the South. Floggings were routinely administered to promote discipline. In addition, many were placed in the sweatbox that was just large enough for a man to stand erect when the door was closed. The only ventilation in the box was provided by a breathing slot, that was one inch high and four inches long, a little below the height of the average man. Often the boxes were placed in direct sun. Men were confined in them from a few hours to a few days. Swelling of the legs in extreme cases necessitated the victims being hospitalized for a week or more. It was not unusual for a convict to die of suffocation. Larger sweatboxes were designed to punish several prisoners collectively. In 1941, a grim report chronicled the appalling treatment of Georgia's prisoners forced into the sweat box in which “a Negro convict had died of suffocation in a sweat-box 7½ feet square, where he, together with 21 other prisoners, was incarcerated for 11 hours. There was only a six-inch opening in the roof of the box for the purposes of ventilation” (Barnes & Teeters, 1946).

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