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Updated: June 13, 2025
Since that eventful period the Negro has had a checkered career, passing through the reconstruction period, with its many lights and shadows, despite the assaults of prejudice and prescription by exclusion from most of the remunerative callings and avocations, partiality in sentencing him to the horrors of the chain-gang, lynching, and burning at the stake.
He had been in jail dozens of times rather liked the fun; had served one term on the chain-gang not so bad either shouldn't mind another learned a good many prime things there. At first Fred seemed inclined to shrink from his new associate. An instinctive feeling, like the warning of an invisible angel, seemed to whisper, "Beware!"
For stealing $25 worth of anything the penalty was three years in prison at hard labor. The unfortunate was usually put in the convict chain-gang and forced to work along the roads. Street-begging was prohibited by drastic laws; poverty was substantially a crime.
"Yas'm; he's twenty now, and big." "Whipped him!" Miss Smith repeated. "And so you can't leave?" "No'm, he say he'll sell us out and put us in de chain-gang if we go. The boys is plumb mad, but I'se a-pleadin' with 'em not to do nothin' rash." "But but I thought they had already started to work a crop on the Tolliver place?"
She began, quite unconsciously, to tell him about herself, the things she had done and had not done and the things she had wished for. She told him of her husband and this new farm they were trying to buy. She said it was hard to get niggers to work. She said they ought all to be in the chain-gang and made to work. Even then some ran away.
This accomplished, a bright nickel-steel chain was brought forth, run down through the links of all the handcuffs, and locked at front and rear of the double-line. We were now a chain-gang. The command to march was given, and out we went upon the street, guarded by two officers. The tall negro and I had the place of honor. We led the procession.
"Instead of going up, I turned and descended to the left. My idea was to let that chain-gang get out of sight before I climbed the hill. You know I am not particularly tender; I've had to strike and to fend off. I've had to resist and to attack sometimes that's only one way of resisting without counting the exact cost, according to the demands of such sort of life as I had blundered into.
The idea of buying land was foreign to all of them, and there were not more than twenty acres of land owned by the colored people in this whole neighborhood. The churches and schools were practically closed, while crime and immorality were rampant. The carrying of men and women to the chain-gang was a frequent occurrence.
The chain-gang consisted of a number of men varying from twelve to twenty-five, all chained to one sixty-four pound ball. They were also stationed near the Star Fort, standing out in the hot sun, without a particle of shade over them. When one moved they all had to move. They were scourged with the dysentery, and the necessities of some one of their number kept them constantly in motion.
I could have sobbed into the bacon and eggs. That there wasn't any sympathy to be got out of Jeeves was what put the lid on it. For a moment I almost weakened and told him to destroy the hat and tie if he didn't like them, but I pulled myself together again. I was dashed if I was going to let Jeeves treat me like a bally one-man chain-gang!
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