We was all one unit—chained together while we worked the fields.
Some of the old timers, they’d work a patch alone but the guards knew they wasn’t going anywhere. They rest of us, hell, we was hobbled all the time.
Now to outside folk, they got no understandin’ of what it’s like to be hobbled. See, they take these two big leg irons—thick and heavy—and they wrap em’ around your ankles; nice and tight like. Them shackles on your feet are married by a real short chain so’s you can’t take a step bigger’n a few inches at a time.
Once a man is in the grip, the Bosses keep us all together with a long chain—runs clear from the very first man all the way to the very last one. That way you gots to shuffle together real slow to git from one place to another.
I can tell you, them chains is heavy and can cut a man up real bad—and with all the work to be done, well them sores never quite heal up.
Workin’ like mules in the blazin’ sun is all we’d do. Warden says we got to pay for our crimes but most of us havin’ a hard time with that seein’ that we didn’t do much more than drink a little corn squeezin’s. Guess the police don’t like colored folk cookin’ corn mash—they gets real mad about it.
‘Bout the only time life ain’t so bad is when a rain come. We all be workin’ hard but when a rain come, seems like every man just looks up at the sky. The rain feels mighty good on my face and I don’t have to stoop for ‘while. Then it’s back to digging—rain and all.
Yes sir, I’m a long way from my home and ’bout the only time it ain’t so bad is when a rain come.
In 1886, virtually every state across the central and southern plains authorized the use of chain gangs. There are no firm statistics but according to most estimates hundreds if not thousands of chain gang members died from malnutrition, physical abuse, or being shot while trying to escape. By 1912 the National Committee On Prison Labor vilified chain gangs as the last vestige of the slave system–a clear reference to the overwhelmingly black representation serving on the chain gangs.
Hard lands, south central NE
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