Texas Gulag: The Chain Gang Years 1875-1925 [Paperback]

Gary Brown (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 2002

For fifty years prison inmates in Texas were leased out to railroads, coal mines, farm plantations, and sawmill crews with terrible incidences of brutality, cruelty, injury, and death to the prisoners. They were forced to produce daily work quotas of seven tons of coal, three hundred pounds of cotton, or one and one-half cords of wood. They were fed spoiled hog meat and slept on mattresses filled with bugs and filthy from sweat, blood, and dirt. They were punished by brutal whippings with an instrument known as the "bat" and by various other methods. Self-mutilation by cutting off fingers, hands, and feet and even self-blinding were commonplace to avoid working in these lease camps. It was a period in which the state prison system was shrouded in secrecy. Former prisoners had only one option available to try to inform the public about the brutality and corruption. They could write their personal memoirs. And an amazing number of them did—dating back to the 1870s. Herein are some of their stories.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Author Gary Brown spent twenty-three years in Texas prisons as a teacher and counselor. His book Singin' a Lonesome Song: Texas Prison Tales is a collection of stories about colorful characters who have served time in Texas prisons over the past 150 years. His other books include Volunteers in the Texas Revolution: The New Orleans Greys and Hesitant Martyr in the Texas Revolution: James Walker Fannin. He resides in Friendswood, Texas.

Product Details

• Paperback: 284 pages
• Publisher: Taylor Trade Publishing (February 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1556229313
• ISBN-13: 978-1556229312
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,692,780 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Before Solzhenitsyn ..., February 5, 2009

By 

Giordano Bruno (Wherever I am, I am.) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Texas Gulag: The Chain Gang Years 1875-1925 (Paperback)

... and before the horrors of the Gulag Archipelago, there were equally horrific forced labor camps in 19th Century Tsarist Russia, out there in frozen Siberia, as described in painful honesty by Fydor Dostoevsky in the House of the Dead. But historical honesty requires me to mention the chain gang prison labor atrocities of the American South during the apartheid era from the end of the Civil War to the advent of Civil Rights. No author of Solzehenitsyn's or Dostoevsky's stature has written about the chain gangs, which were largely populated by African-Americans, but a surprising number of the survivors of such abuse wrote memoirs of various lengths and literary qualities. Those memoirs are the basis of the book Texas Gulag, which I read several years ago but haven't been able to forget.

Another book worth reading, if you can handle the cruel truth is:
Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice by David Oshinsky

One has to wonder what grueling tales might be written by the survivors of the torture camp at Guantanamo.