Chain Gangs of Georgia: A Shameful State of Affairs Which the Legislature is Called Upon to Remedy.

Title

Chain Gangs of Georgia: A Shameful State of Affairs Which the Legislature is Called Upon to Remedy.

Subject

Carceral labor

Newspaper article

Race and labor

Gender and labor

Archival framing

Institutional power

Archival silence

Representation and bias

Late 19th century

Post Reconstruction era

Georgia

United States, South

Convict camps in Georgia

Description

This newspaper article in the Union Recorder (Milledgeville, GA), published in November of 1895, reports on Governor Atkinson's 1895 investigation into Georgia's chain gang system. The report describes 33 convict camps holding 795 people, including both Black and White prisoners and multiple women and girls, some under 14. The article lists daily labor assignments such as farming, sawmilling, brickmaking, turpentine work, and road construction. It notes that prisoners often worked ten hours per day and that racial and gender segregation was rarely enforced in work or sleeping quarters. Although the article frames these conditions as an administrative failure requiring legislative reform, it documents the routine exploitation of forced labor under the misdemeanor convict system.

Interpretation Note
The article presents the chain gang system as an administrative shortcoming rather than as a moral or racial catastrophe, one that can be tidied up with the right legislation. In doing so, it shows how institutional language can blunt the edges of violence and turn brutality into a mere "affair to remedy." The recitation of prisoners' ages, races, and daily tasks tacitly normalizes forced labor and sidesteps the systematic exploitation of Black men, women, and children. The casual mention that women and girls worked the same grueling jobs as men, such as ten hours of brickmaking or road building, while still being expected to cook and clean for the camp, reflects how deeply race and gender dictated the distribution and meaning of labor in these spaces. Following Marlene Manoff's thinking, the article is both a historical object and a product of an archival logic that prefers bureaucratic categories over lived human experience. When read alongside Tonia Sutherland and Zakiya Collier's work on Black archival practices, it becomes clear that records of Black labor were almost always shaped by the state's need to legitimize punishment and control. Drawing on Saidiya Hartman, the archive is shaped by the people who exercised violence, not by those who endured it. What remains are documents produced by captors and officials, which means the record is built from a perspective of power rather than from the lives of those who were exploited.

Creator

Union Recorder (Milledgeville, Georgia)

Source

Georgia Historic Newspapers

Georgia Newspaper Project

Publisher

Digital Library of Georgia

Date

1895-11-19

Contributor

Georgia Newspaper Project

Digital Library of Georgia

Rights

http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/NoC-US/1.0/

No Copyright, United States.

Relation

DLG Record: https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_miln_uar1895-0365

Partner-site URL: https://gahistoricnewspapers.galileo.usg.edu/lccn/sn89053811/1895-11-19/ed-1/seq-1/print/image_583x817_from_1780,406_to_3472,2776/

Included in the Georgia Exhibits "Convict Labor" feature: https://georgia-exhibits.galileo.usg.edu/spotlight/convict-labor/feature/women-in-convict-camps

Format

Digitized newspaper article

JPEG image

Newspaper

Language

English

Type

Text

Still Image

Newspaper article

Identifier

DLG Identifier: dlg_miln_uar1895-0365

Coverage

Georgia, United States
Baldwin County
Milledgeville
Coordinates: 33.08014, -83.2321

Alternative Title

Male and Female Prisoners Worked Indiscriminately on Chain Gangs (reported in Union Recorder, 1895)

Extent

One digitized newspaper page

Medium

Newspaper

Bibliographic Citation

Union Recorder (Milledgeville, GA). “Chain Gangs of Georgia: A Shameful State of Affairs.” November 19, 1895. Georgia Historic Newspapers. Digital Library of Georgia.

Spatial Coverage

United States
Georgia
Baldwin County
Milledgeville
33.08014, -83.2321

Temporal Coverage

1895-11-19

Provenance

Digitized from original print newspapers held by the Georgia Newspaper Project and made available through Georgia Historic Newspapers via the Digital Library of Georgia.

Text

Transcription:

CHAIN GANGS OF GEORGIA
A Shameful State of Affairs Which the Legislature Is Called Upon to Remedy.

Governor Atkinson sent a special message to the legislature last Tuesday on the subject of misdemeanor convicts. Reports reached the Governor touching the management of the convicts that indicated such a state of affairs that he felt it his duty to investigate and place the facts before the legislature. To perform this important work the Governor appointed Hon. R. F. Wright, a man of unquestioned integrity and ability. Mr. Wright’s report to the Governor was laid before the legislature and remedial legislation asked for. The report of Mr. Wright reveals a state of affairs that is a burning disgrace to the State of Georgia. He has visited thirty-three camps. The total number of convicts imprisoned in these gangs is 795, of which there are 27 white males, no females, 749 colored males and 19 colored females. The average length of sentence is nine months. Average number of hours worked per day, ten. These convicts are employed in farming, saw milling, brick making, turpentine farms, and a few on public roads. Where convicts are hired to private individuals, the hire averages about $5 per month.

“Generally the whites and blacks are not chained together, nor are the males and females, but they are worked together indiscriminately, and in many of the gangs practically no provision is made for a separation of races or sexes during the day, or at night in sleeping quarters.

There are among this number many convicts still under their majority, and I found eleven under the age of fourteen.

Original Format

Newspaper (printed on newsprint)