A chain gang is a group of prisoners chained together while they performed a menial task, such as chipping stone. Although chain gangs are rare today, they still exist.

Chain gangs were long common in the U.S. South, and featured in a number of books and films set there, such as Cool Hand Luke and Oh Brother, Where Art Thou, and apparently are not unknown there even today (although they have again been abolished in Alabama since the quote below was written).

"Alabama is now proving the past is not always past. Alabama has become the first state in the nation to re-institute chain gangs. However, the worst part about chain gangs in Alabama is not the young men chained together in groups of five as they urinate and defecate... not the cuts and bruises that the chains inevitably leave on the legs and ankles of the young men... the inadequate or total lack of medical treatment... the total lack of access to the courts... nor the dehumanization of these young men in chains and their abrupt return to the slavery of their ancestors. The worst part of the chain gang in Alabama is that the rest of the world rushed to see it.

"...The rest of the world is jealous. They too want their own slaves. So they wait and watch so that they can do it too, so they can do it with less problems. America, the last country to outlaw slavery, now becomes the country to teach the rest of the world to enslave legally."

(Source: Michael Lamar Powell, Modern Slavery: American Style (1995), p. 4.)

External links

• Movie of chain gang in Charleston, South Carolia; circa 1904
• The Labour of Doing Time

See also

Chain Gang : music band.