OLD PAINT Stanzas contributed by Davidson, the cook, at Swenson's Throckmorton Ranch. Old Paint had a colt way down on the Rio Grande, We roped him and branded him and called him Cheyenne. Old Paint's a good saddler, he paces when he can He paces all the time if he's not in the sand. AF 1933/001 FOLDER 400 ADVENTURES OF A BALLAD HUNTER Tack[?] made by John A. Lomax It is always a dramatic moment for any one when his own voice comes back to him undistorted from the black mouth of a loud speaker. He seems to feel the intense and absorbing pleasure that a child experiences when he first recognizes himself in a mirror. One old hard-bitten Mexican vaquero in the mesquite country of southwest Texas, when his song was played for him unexpectedly, said with soft amazement "Madre de Dios"; then after a time, "Muy hombre"! A negro prisoner, wishing to communicate his extravagant uncontrollable surprise, fell flat on his back and lay there until his buddies picked him up. A mountaineer, when asked if he would like to hear his record played back, said, "I reckon so. Anything I do onct, I'll do hit twict". "Ain't men got sharp?" he added, when the record was finished. "A Man can't stutter none talkin' into one of them things, got to stick to plain English. If he don't, hit'll tell on him." On hearing his voice come back, an Alabama Negro exclaimed, "Dat's pure hit!" Another decided: "That machine can shore beat me singin'". Whenever a new settlement grew up in the wilderness of the American frontier it needed a minister and a fiddler and a ballad-maker. The young, radical, and sincere religious denomination of their time, - the Baptist, the Methodist, the Presbyterian, and other churches, were not afraid to adapt their services to the strenuous emotional needs of the pioneer community, and they had young minister who were fearless enough to ride their wild, lonely, and dangerous circuits into the new country. The P. 42/156 2 Adventures of a Ballad Hunter form of service that these strong, sincere and practical men worked out with their congregations was taken over later wholesale by the Negro slaves who had just been deprived of their African gods; and the Negro flung into the service all his love of the dance and dramatic ceremonials. Into the songs in which pioneers had mourned the hardships of their frontier life, the Negro poured the sorrows of his bondage, his jubilant and triumphant strength, his desire for the freedom of heaven where he could "set down", and his flair for epigram and religious imagery. He could sing of the fearful delights of the Resurrection Day with the pleasure and passion of an early Christian. My Lawd, what a mornin' when the stars begin to fall, My Lawd, what a mornin' when the stars begin to fall, You see the world on fire, You see the moon a-b leedin' You see the tombs come crackin', Then you see the graves a-bustin', Then you see the coffins crackin', Then you see the bones a-creepin', And you see po' sinners rising' . . . The weariness of this life was never more poignantly expressed: I lay in the grave and I stretch out my arms When I lay this body down. Nor is the reward of the common man in Heaven more powerfully put: When I get to Heaven, gonna take my stand Gonna talk with my Lord like a natural man. Gonna argue with the Father Gonna chatter with the Son Tell them all about the world I done come from. Two white horses side by side, Me an' my Jesus take us an evenin' ride. P. 43/156 3 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter In the period after the Civil War the Negro established his own churches in every community in the South. They were symbols of his new-found freedom, and these churches have remained the centers of Negro community life. Through them his children have been educated, his insurance companies built and his leaders developed. In them he has created what we believe is the largest single body of American folk song, the Negro spiritual. The heroes of Negro ballads, or "sinful" songs such as Stagolee, Po' Laz'rus, and Frankie and Johnny, has been much the same sort of people, although the history of the Negro hero has been slightly more complex. At first under slavery the hero was Br'er Rabbit, the trickster, "born and bred in the briar patch"; John, the Negro slave who always wriggled his way out of any difficult situation by fooling his stupid old white master. As the Negro came into the expanding economy of growing America, some of his heroes, like John Henry, became strong workers. They took John Henry to the White House And they buried him in the sand And every locomotive come a-roarin' by Sais, "There lies a steel-drivin' man". In the "Ballet of the Boll Weevil" the Negro compares the lot of the little black bug from Mexico, to his own. Both are "lookin' for a home." As he crowded into slum section of Southern towns, as he bunked up in the levee camps and construction camps, or acquired the P. 44/156 4 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter freedom to ride the rods, his heroes turned into bad men. Ol' bad Laz'rus he'd been a bully from a baby Done got blowed down, Lawd, Lawd, done got blowed down. Laz'rus was a relatively mild character from the levee camp; Stagolee was the baddest man from the redlight district of Beale Street. Stagolee he came a-walkin' with a Forty-four in his hand, Says, I feel mistreated this mornin', I might kill most any man. Through the Negro secular songs, called sinful sons, the rhythmic gang work-songs, the hollers and the blues, the Negro folk singer gets closer to the quality of pure and spontaneous communal song than can be found in any other type of American folk music. In these secular songs he has somehow managed to speak in musical terms not only his own personal and group sentiments but also the feelings of America herself. His language is simple, clean, real and lyric all at once, and his musical style is a magic combination of European harmony, imaginative melodic improvisation and a rhythmic pulse which sometimes has the slow suggestive sweep of the rivers of America, and again the reckless hellbent rhythm of her railroads. These songs are perhaps the hardest of all American folk songs to popularize, for everything depends on the way they are sung, upon the feeling of a commonly experienced group that singers manifest in their delivery. Even the lonely field worker, moaning out his troubles to his mules in the river bottom, manages to convey this quality of communal experience; P. 45/156 5 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter but to watch a singing section gang repair a length of track on a railroad is a dramatic experience that can never be communicated to a person who has not seen it. Like all other dramatic experiences, it is totally unrecapturable. Each of the blues, the work songs and the hollers, therefore, must be read or sung as outline sketches for dramatization. Captain says hurry and the boss says run; Got two or three notions I ain't gonna do nary one. The longest day I ever seen Was the day Roberta died. Little boy, little boy, why are in here so long I found my day in the high sheriff's barn. The work song, presumably one of the earliest forms of popular songs, is fast passing out of existence. It loses its reason for living as group labor is displaced by the machine. Even now in the South it is hard to find gang work songs except in teh penitentiaries and prison camps where man-power is all too plentiful. The NEgro doubtless brought the habit of singing at his work from Africa. On this side of the water he learned to sing in parts and, since his melodic requirements were very simple, he found all the material he needed in white hymns, white folk music and a few remembered African themes. As he made his work songs, the Negro cleared the land of the South, worked its plantations, built its railroads, loaded its steamboats, raised its levees, and out its roads. When he worked with a group of his fellows in a situation where a regular work rhythm was possible, he sang simple, high-rhythmic songs; and every as, pick or hoe in the group fell on the same boat. When he picked P. 46/156 6 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter cotton or did some other form of work in which it was not possible to adhere to a regular rhythm, his sons rose and fell with the free and easy movement of his breathing. These songs were not designed for the ear of the Lord, nor for the ear of the white boss. In them the Negro workman was likely to speak his free and open mind. If he touches on religion at all, his mood is likely to e at one extreme submissive devoutness; at the other, a horse-laugh: Mary, Marthy, Luke and John, All them 'ciples dead and gone. He complains about the hot sun and his long hours: Looky yonder, the hot broiling sun turnin' over, An' it won't go down, Lawd, Lawd, it won't go down. Got up this mornin' so doggone soon, Couldn't see nothin' but the stars an' moon. His throat dry and full of dust, he remarks: Well, I b'lieve that water-boy musta been drownded Out in the sea, Lawd, Lawd, out in the sea. He shivers in the spring norther: Told my Cap'n my feet was cold, Goddam your feet, let the wheeler roll. He remarks upon his poor pay: Work all day and Don't get enough, Buy my tobacco an' buy my snuff. He reviles his faithless woman: Won' cook me no breakfus', won' wash me no clo's Lord, won' do nothin' but walk de road. When I first met you, Mama, yo' dress was a great big hole, Now I give you my good money an' I can't touch you with a ten-foot pole. P. 47/156 7 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter He talks over his shoulder to his Captain, his big boss-man: Ask my captain to give me a dime; "Say, old nigger, you a dime behin'". Ask my captain did the money come; "Naw, de river too foggy, de boat won't run." Behind the Captain's back, he and his comrades speak a little more frankly: Well you kicked and stomped and beat me An' you call that fun, sir; But if I catch you in my home town, Gonna make you run, sir. Irony, satire and double entendre are always the weapons of subject peoples and the working Negro is master of these devices. Through all of these work songs there runs a theme of playful irony, and although they are full of laughter, much of it is hearty and full-blooded; much of it reflects the feeling of this verse: If you see me laughin', I'm laughin' jes' to keep from cryin'. P. 48/156 8 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter About the middle of June, 1933, a queerly loaded Ford car left Austin, Texas. headed south. I was at the wheel; at my left sat Alan Lomax, a seventeen year old Junior, with a sorappy year of University work behind him - a tired, sleep traveling companion, nervous and fussy because he was going away from nine months on the Forty Acres, a period dotted with sweethearts, too little undisturbed by admonitions to study from over-indulgent professors. Soon, in the blessed refuge of youth, he slumped and slept. Stored in the rear of the car were two army cots and bedding, a cooking outfit, provisions, a change of clothing, an infinite number of et cetera which will manage to cumber any group of travelers. AND, as a crown to our discomfort, a 650 pound sound-recording machine, built into the rear of the Ford, a cumbersome pile of wire and iron and steel, two batteries weighing seventy-five pounds each, a microphone, a complicated machine of delicate adjustments, coils of wire, numerous gadgets, besides hundreds of blank aluminum and celluloid discs; and finally a multitude of extra parts, the purpose and place of which neither Alan nor I had the faintest glimmer. For four months this burdened Ford bore us through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Later in the same brave little Ford we also visited Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia. We camped by the roadside and slept under the stars. In Louisiana bitten by malaria mosquitoes, I suddenly collapsed from violent attacks of chills and fever, the shaking ague. While I was yet in the hospital Alan fell ill from the same malady, P. 49/156 9 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter and while he was recuperating, we treated ourselves to a leisurely stay in a comfortable tourist camp on the outskirts of Jackson, Mississippi. We both worked hard, made long night drives over strange rough roads, camped only when we were too tired to go further, ate rough and too-quickly-cooked food. Sometimes we dined alongside of convicts, more often with the trusties or the guards. We worked late every night and often throughout Sunday. Criss-cross over the South our journey carried us. Often we doubled back to visit a community we had missed. Before teh end of the this particular trial had been reached and Alan and I were back in Austin, we had traveled a distance of 25,000 miles. The object of this long journey was to record on aluminum and celluloid discs, for deposit in the Library of Congress, the folk songs of the Negro, songs that in musical phrasing and in poetic content are most unlike those of the white race, the least contaminated by white influence or by modern Negro jazz. Folk singers render their music more naturally in the easy sociability of their homes and churches and schools, in their fields and woodyards, just as birds sing more sweetly in their native tress and country. To find such songs we visited groups of Negroes living in remote communities, where the population was almost entirely black; also large plantations where in numbers the Negroes greatly exceeded the whites, as in the Mississippi Delta district (one Negro town there of 2000 inhabitants had not one white resident). Another source for material was lumber camps that employed only Negro foreman and Negro laborers. However, our best field was the southern penitentiary. We went to P. 50/156 10 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter all eleven of them and presented our plan to possibly 25,000 Negro[es] convicts. Most of these men and women saw in us hope that once more they might get out into the free world. At every opportunity they told Alan and me their pitiful stories. Few confessed guilt of any wrongdoing, though over in the Mississippi Delta a group of convicts sang a swinging work-song which contained this moving couplet: "The only thing I ever done wrong, Stayed in Mississippi one day too long." In 1908 a drunk Negro man in a low dive in San Antonio sang for me "Home on the Range". All the radio singing of that song you have ever heard comes from the tune which I recorded at that time on a cylinder of a squeaky Edison dictaphone. The tune afterwards lay buried inmy book of cowboy songs for nearly twenty-five years. Some day perhaps other tunes first recorded by Alan and me may find similar recognition. And possibly also some of the music may prove suggestive to American composers, who, like the old German masters, may seek inspiration and new melodies found in the tunes of tho lowly. At the present time Ray Harris, Narl Robinson, and the Dean fo the School of Music in Yale University, are eminent American composers at work on ambitious musical compositions with their center cores taken from tunes first published in our American Ballads and Folk Songs. Very recently the British Broadcasting Corporation selected from our records forty tunes to make up six programs of American Negro songs, the first program to be broadcast Christmas Day to its twenty million subscribers. Of the forty tunes selected, Alan and I found thirty- P. 51/156 11 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter seven from the singing of Negro convicts in southern penitentiaries. We visited our singers where they felt at home and comfortable, where their singing was unrestrained and natural. In many states the convicts we visited work on large cotton, corn and cane plantations, where they are separated into companies of three or four hundred men, living in groups of well kept houses that are situated in different parts of plantations. Both in Mississippi and in Louisiana the farms comprise about 25,000 acres each, with about a dozen headquarters. The black convicts do not work or eat or sleep in the same buildings as do the white prisoners. They are kept in entirely separate units, they are guarded by Negro trusties; they even work in separate fields. Thus a long-time Negro convict spends many years with practically no chance of hearing a white man speak or sing. Such men slough off the white idiom they may once have employed in their speech and revert more and more to the idiom of the Negro common people. In my judgment, the songs and ballads we found under the conditions indicated, are practically pure Negro creations, both in words and music. Either that, or the words have become so encrusted with Negro accretions that trace of white influence is completely obscured. Long-term convicts, I found, naturally revert to the songs they sang before coming to the penitentiary. Thus the old songs are kept alive and growing as they are passed along to successive generations of convicts. Sometimes an indulgent prison management allows a talented Negro prisoner to keep his own guitar for the entertainment of fellow prisoners, to be used P. 52/156 12 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter occasionally when white visitors come in. Perhaps the presence of black and sinister iron bars, crowds of men in dismal-looking gray stripes, and once a broad bull whip hanging by a nail near the entrance door of the main dormitory, helped to emphasize the impression that a tone of sadness runs through the songs of Negro convicts. At the Prairie View, State Normal College of Texas, supported by grants from the State Legislature, the President assured me of his sympathy and cooperation in having the students sing the songs for which I was searching. A stay of two days was barren of results, because in some secret unknown way the signal for thumbs down on my project was flashed over the campus. No so-called "sinful songs" were currently there, although I heard occasionally from the windows of the dormitories snatches of songs which I was eager to record, unwittingly sung by forgetful students. This experience was repeated at Tuskegee and at other Negro colleges. The "educated" Negro has little love for his own folk-songs. Black Sanpson, a Negro murderer in the Nashville penitentiary, would not sing an innocently worded levee camp-song into our microphone until ordered to do so by the warden. The warden had sent for him. When the guard had pushed in the frightened Negro, the warden said: "Black Sampson, sing whatever songs these white men want." The Negro shuffled up to the microphone, the machine whirled, Alan shouted: "Shoot, Black Sampson". But he didn't sing. He prayed: "Oh Lord, you see what a fix this pore nigger is in. He's got to do what this white man tells him to do. I hope, dear Lord, you understand the situation P. 53/156 18 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter and will forgive me for what I'm going to do". That record will forever carry Black Sampson's spoken expiation for his sin of setting down a delightful tune and story. Afterwards when Alan played back the record, Black Sampson seemed delightful and happy at hearing his own voice. Later that same night, when Black Sampson helped other convicts carry our heavy machine to the big prison gates, he said to me as I told him goodbye, "Boss, don't you think when some of them big men in Washington hears my song, they'll help this pore nigger git outa this place? I wish they would. I jes nacherly don't like it." "Niggers growin' mo' like white folks, every day" begins a Negro song. The Negro is going further in becoming "Mo' like white folks" than merely to modify his beautiful spirituals. Under the leadership of his preachers, his teachers, and his men of education, he is abandoning them as unworthy of perpetuation entirely. Manassas, Virginia, was once recommended to me as a likely place to find genuine Negro spirituals. I made a long drive to reach the church only to be gretted, when the singing began, by a surpliced choir that marched from the basement up into the church to slow waltz-time music, derived from a book of cheap, white, revival tunes. P. 54/156 14 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter "Boss", a Negro man once said to me, "Boss, do you know what is the difference between a white man and a nigger?" "Well" I answered, "I think I know some differences; but tell me what you think." "The principal difference is this" he replied, "when a white man talks he talks with the back of his head; when a nigger man talks he talks with the front of his head". What my Negro friend meant was that a white man in his speech shows you his full mind, keeping nothing in reserve; while a Negro, constantly on the defensive among the white race, can seldom afford to be absolutely frank - always in the "back of his head" he keeps unrevealed probably the most interesting remainder of his thinking. In other words the average Negro tells you what he think you expect him to say, not what he really thinks, not often showing you what is in the "back of his head." I have talked to many Negroes during the past two years in my 50,000 miles of travel through the South. Many of them were inmates of Southern penitentiaries. They had stolen as the "easiest way to make a living". [Jason] Jared[?] Head said: "Mos' Jew men in Dallas had their goods spread all over the sidewalks, so I just took what I needed."; they had stabbed or shot in revenge against some one who was "messing up wid dere homely affairs"; and they had sometimes killed a bystander. Allen Prothere of Nashville, Tennessee, said to me: "Boss, I jus' got to shootin' niggers and I couldn't stop." But they - these black men and women in jail - among the aristocracy of the Southern Negro working class - either resented the plenty of their former white masters and took what they thought was rightfully theirs; or they had courage and a sense P. 55/156 15 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter of honor that gave them nerve to handle a "cool, keen knife" or a "cold forty-fo'" in avenging a family wrong. In other words, they did what was expected of them by the black communities in which they lived. They were conformists - as most of us are, or pretend to be. These two types cover a large percentage of Negro criminals. In the ballads which sometimes recount the more dramatic of the encounters between the Negro and his white master, between the Negro and the law, between black and black, the Negro is likely to sing from "the back of his head." Nigger and de white man playin' seven-up, Oh my hon; Nigger won de money but was 'fraid to pick it up, Oh my hon. Lemme tell you white man, lemme tell you, honey; Nigger makes de cotton, but de white folks git de money. And then the unforgettable refrain: Ain't it hard? Ain't it hard? Aint' it hard to be a nigger, nigger? Ain't it hard? Ain't it hard? For you caint git yo' money when it's due. Sometimes he sings of the leasing system of convicts, practiced in some states about twenty-five years ago, when felons, both white and black. were hired at so much each to white owners of big plantations: You oughta been here in 1910 They wuz rolin' de women jes like day drove de men, You oughta been here in 1904 You could find a dead nigger at every turn row. P. 56/156 16 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter And it was along about three o'clock in "dem, long, hot summer days," when the heat seemed unsupportable, when the sun went down so slowly that it "pull to stop" that they would shout in union: Go down, old Hannah, don' you rise no mo[r]; Ef you rise anymo', bring Judgment Day." Booker Washington, wise, tolerant, a gifted orator, a great leader of his people, urged Negroes to preserve their glorious spirituals as well as their rhythmic songs to labor. Often during his addresses he cast aside the white man's hymnal and led the audience in singing the songs of the black race. "Develop yourselves as Negroes, not merely imitate the white" he urged. But I have found few followers in this regard, of that gifted man. Even in the South at no church in the cities can the old time spirituals be heard sung in the simple, manner of the old days, or as one can yet hear them in country communities. City church choirs do sing the old spirituals, but in such musical phrases that destroy the charm of the beautiful old melodies. One has to go to the back country, or to communities where the churches are not large enough to attract the educated or semi-educated minister, to hear these songs sung with the emotional fervor and vigor that give them their chief charm. "We have grown beyond such crude songs" said an intelligent Alabama Negro to me when I asked for help in collecting Negro folk songs. As for the secular songs, dealing with the intimate personal life P. 57/156 17 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter of the race - the so-called "worldly," "reels," "made-up", "jumped-up", "sinful" songs, both the Negro preacher and the Negro teacher, are opposed to their preservation. In the churches a member will be "turned out" if he persists in singing them. When a guitar-playing Negro is converted he must get rid of his guitar or have trouble with his preacher and his deacons. In a remote lumber camp on the Sabine River in Texas, after long entreaty, I persuaded a black songster to sing into my microphone. He did so after carefully closing his cabin door, and to the evident distress of his wife who feared the loss of her social standing. yet the songs I was after were entirely innocent of obscenity or profanity. In my travels I soon found that my time was wasted in visiting Negro colleges in search of songs. Always I was received with polite consideration, sometimes with such cordiality that I was misled into hoping that material would be forthcoming. At Tuskegee where I had been led to believe my work would receive encouragement, the head of the music department first pretended that he could not understand what I was hutning for and afterwards declared that I would get no aid from him or his students. A few days later I visited a remote Negro settlement near Atmore, Alabama, which supported an excellent country high school. The Tuskegee graduate who was serving his fifteenth year as head of the school, confessed to me that he would injure his standing with his patrons if he encouraged the children to sing their own folk songs. He showed me in the library printed collections of "play party" and "ring songs" - simple dance tunes for children which the P. 58/156 18 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter music teacher used. Nearly all of the songs had come from England. Hearing singing, I went to a window and saw a dozen young girls in a nearby pine grove swinging and turning to charming music. I went out and listened; and later, after some persuasion I made permanent records of twelve Negro "ring songs", the tunes and words of which were, so far as I could tell, oof purely Negro origin. Some gave vivid and unusual pictures of social life in the South. In the Nashville penitentiary, Black Sampson, a giant of a man with an engaging smile, a singer of unusual quality, refused kindly but firmly to sing any of the songs he had learned as a railroad and levee worker. "I've got religion, boss, and I'se quite all dat." Later when we told the warden that Black Sampson knew one song that we wanted especially, he sent a guard for him, and the frightened Negro shuffled up and took his place before his microphone. Alan, my son and collaborator, started the machine, and said: "Shoot, Black Sampson". But Black Sampson didn't sing. He closed his eyes and prayed: "Oh Lord, I knows I'se doin' wrong. I cain't help myself. I'se got to do what dis white man tells me. I hope you will understand and not blame me for what I has to do. I know its sinful and wrong. Amen". Then he sang, and the microphone captured both the prayer and the song. That aluminum record in the Folk Song Archive in the Library of Congress will tell for many years the story of Black Sampson' implicit belief and also his cleverness in a difficult situation. Throughout the next day Black Sampson asked me many times, after P. 59/156 19 Adventures of a Ballad-Hunter he had heard his song played back to him: "Boss, do you like my song? Boss, do you think that some of dose big men up in Washington, when d ey hears my song, won't do something to help dis po' nigger? Sorta have mercy on him?" As I shook hands with him late that night at the big gates of the penitentiary, where he had helped carry our heavy machine, he said earnestly: "Boss, cain't you help me git outa dis place? I jes' nacherly don't like it." Black Sampson had just begun a forty years' sentence. P. 60/156 [*General*] A volume could be written about the receptions (sometimes they were eruptions of disgust) given me by wardens of southern penitentiaries. I once had an amazing experience at the State Penitentiary at Columbia, South Carolina. It all grew out of a letter. Surprisingly enough the courtly and diplomatic Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, had a hand in the composition and circulation of this letter. In fact, it went out as a franked official document from the Library. After completing my visits to the penal institutions of the southern states, the idea occurred to me that Negro prisoners in Federal penitentiaries might also know folk songs. Thereupon I prepared a letter addressed to the heads of all Federal prisons, and submitted it to Librarian Putnam. He polished my English a bit, kindly added his endorsement and authorized me to go ahead. Our joint composition read as follows: Library [n] of Congress Division of Music Archive of American Folk-Song Dear Sir: I am collecting for the Library of Congress the words and tunes of songs or ballads current and popular among prisoners, or "made up" by them and passed around by "word of mouth" rather than by the printed page. Many of these songs--though by no means all of them-- relate to experiences in prison, to the life of criminals in jail or in the "free world". They grow in length or change verbally as they are passed around. I wish to secure copies of them all, no matter how crude or vulgar they may be. Where a visit seems justified I plan later to visit your institution to record the tunes of these songs on an electric recording machine. The material I wish to secure is especially plentiful among Negro prisoners. Will you, therefore, be good enough to make proper inquiry and let me know whether such songs are current among the persons under your charge? May I also ask you to forward to me at this time the words of those songs that are available, with such remarks and suggestions as might be helpful? Even short scraps will be welcome. This proposal is part of a plan of the Library of Congress to collect and make available to properly qualified students the words and music of all American folk-songs. I shall greatly appreciate a reply to this communication. John A. Lomax Honorary Curator and Consultant in American Folk-Song. Compliance with the above request will be a service to the Library of Congress, and appreciated. Herbert Putnam From this letter there came in a batch of unique manuscripts, none of which have seen the light, much of which are of the type likenesses are kept locked away from young and innocent readers. But long before any replies reached me, this letter on one occasion, was flung back into my face under circumstances that made the incident one of the most embarassing and unhappy moments of my life. At Columbia, my friend, Professor Reed Smith of the University of South Carolina had introduced me to the Governor. That gentlemen gave me a note to the warden of the big, gloomy prison located on the outskirts of the city. At the prison gates the guards bluntly refused entrance to my companion and chauffeur, one Leadbelly. I left him in the car gloomy and uneasy because so many "laws" were close by, angry probably at another instance of race discrimination, more miserable from an acking tooth he had refused to have [p]treated. I remember when I came back, the car was spatted with blood. Leadbelly had been trying to pull his molar with the plyers. From the reception office I sent the Governor's note in to the Warden. Almost instantly the messenger returned. He took me to a room where five or six grim faced men sat about a table. I sensed trouble in the cold greeting. No one shook my hand. The warden shoved my circular letter at me and asked, "Are you the man that wrote that letter?" (By error the letter had been sent to this state prison) "Yes sir" -- very timidly. "Then you are the very man we are looking for. These gentlemen and I are here discussing the best ways and means to handle an incipient riot in this prison. We already have six of the leaders confined in dark cells for provoking trouble. That letter is the source.of what may become a serious prison outbreak. And here comes the man who has brought it all about with a request from the Governor that I allow the prisoners to sing for him"! He flung the papers on the table and, in his nervousness and excitement, rose from [the table] his chair and paced the room. The other five inquisitors sat and smoked slowly, boring me with unfriendly looks from unfriendly eyes. Suddenly the Warden turned and added, "Why, sir, if I should let it be known that the'man from Washington' had come, and then permit you to walk across the prison yard, a riot would be on in five minutes. I couldn't be responsible for what would happen. You get away from this place at once and don't tell anyone else who you are. And go quick". I didn't wait for a second invitation. As I was leaving he fired a final blasting shot. "I notice, too, that in your damned letter you asked us to send in to the Library of Congress all the vulgar songs these men know. What in the hell do you want with dirty songs? And did you think we would violate postal laws to send indecent stuff through the mails?" I don't [think] believe Professor Kittredge who had [asked] advised me to save all types of folk stuff could have appeased that angry and outraged warden. He was still pointing to the door. This time I left without more ado. Later, I heard the details of the story. When my letter came the warden had referred it to an assistant, he to a junior and he to a trusty. Instead of posting it on a bulletin board, this trusty had read and interpreted it to the group of trusties. By the time the mass of convicts heard of the letter its import had been completely lost. A letter far different had taken its place. Like wildfire, the news spread that a man from Washington was coming to investigate the prison system of South Carolina. Any prisoner who had a complaint against the food, brutalities of the guards or thought he should be pardoned would be given a hearing. The New Deal was going to be expanded to the convicts. For days the prisoners had talked of nothing but my coming. Violent altercations had occurred in the prison yard about who was to see me first, who was to be the official spokesman, what each should tell, etc., etc.. Desperate for freedom, hungry for an opportunity to talk out with an officer of Uncle Sam, the excited men were ready to revolt against the authority of the state of South Carolina. I have always wished I might have heard the story direct from the convicts. That was impossible. Better for me and Leadbelly to head north. Chain Gang Negroes "Ninety-nine years on de hard, hard ground, 'Member de night you blowed de woman down? De Jedge he found me guilty, de clerk he wrote it down; Next cold winter mornin' I was penitentiary bound. Here I am for de rest of my nachul life An all I ever done was to kill my wife." One night recently in the auditorium of the Press Club Building of Washington I played some phonograph records of Negro work songs I had made for the Library of Congress from the singing of Negro convicts in the South. "They were so pathetic," said a lady to me afterwards; "so like the singing I have just heard in Florida - Negro chain gangs, you know?" "Just what do you mean a 'chain gang'?" For I had not understood the term when I started out to visit Southern penitentiaries. "Oh, all these Negro men were tied together by a chain running from one leg to another and, just think, at each end of a line of these working men a guard sat on his horse with a shot gun in his hands!" she went on in tones of horror. As it happened, I had recently come from a week's stay at the Florida penitentiary. Afterwards, I had travelled the entire length of the State visiting the gangs of Negro convicts at work on the public roads. I had talked with the guards, with the various assistant wardens and with the superintendent. I had been left alone for hours with the convicts themselves. I had never seen two men chained together. I had never seen a chain of any sort. Whatever Florida's record, under the present management, a guard who uses an oath to any convict, black or white, is instantly discharged. The men at work on the road gangs, chosen after an examination by a physician, Chain Gang Negroes Page Two looked physically fit. I saw no instance of brutal treatment. I heard of none. During the past two years, I have visited the Negroes confined in the penitentiaries of the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia - the men in the walls as well as the men at work on the public roads. I have carried letters either from the Governors or Prison Commissions of each of these States with instructions that permitted me to see and talk with the convicts. In many cases I have been left alone with the convicts for hours - in the dining room, the chapel, the hospital and even in the execution room, where I could have quiet for recording Negro songs. All day on many Sundays and once an entire week behind the prison walls, I have been alone with the men. I have never seen a chain on any prisomer except in rare instances a road gang convict wore a chain strapped around his waist. "Why?" I asked a guard. "Well, you will notice that the chain is so arranged that when he starts to run,it will fall around his legs, rap his ankles and slow up his speed. We never put this contraption on a man except to keep him from running away." At the Penitentiary at Memphis, Tennessee, I noticed a number of Negro convicts each wearing a light two foot chain riveted into a clasp around his ankle. To Keep the chain from dragging, each man had wrapped the chain about his ankle and stuffed the end into his shoe. "These men work on the highways t run through thick underbrush," the guard told me. "They are runaways. It is easy enough for a convict to Chain Gang Negroes Page Three slip away into the woods when the men are building a road through a dense forest. Today, as you see, it is raining. We have them inside shelling peas." And that is what they were doing - shelling garden peas for the cannery. There were hogsheads full of fresh green peas for canning, and a lot of convicts, still wearing road chains, seated around a long table tearing off the soft green pods as the rain poured outside. "But what is Chain gang?" I asked this specific question of a penitentiary warden. "Is it a group of convicts chained together?" "Hell, no," he said, "how could men get any work done all chained together? These men must do an honest day's work, impossible if their bodies did not have free play. A chain gang, as you hear the term used, means only a group of convicts working on the road or elsewhere outside of the Penitentiary walls. It is a group that unhappily arouses a lot of prejudice and much misdirected and maudlin sympathy. Chain gang workers are freer, healthier and happier than those that live inside the walls. You never find one who does not prefer road work or farm work." In visiting the Negro convicts of the nine Southern States, I discovered many other things new to me. I travelled as the special guest of the Governor of each State and with commendation of the Chief Executive of my own State, Texas. I carried a machine to record for the Library of Congress the Negro songs of each State, I was making no investigation of what I saw - the conditions under which the men and women lived, their food and care, their treatment at the hands of the guards, etc. But I could not fail to get many impressions, all the more vivid because until I made this trip, I had never seen a penitentiary or been inside a jail. Naturally, then, I had many surprising experiences with the more than 20,000 black men and women I visited. Chain Gang Negroes Page Four Many forgotten men were among them. Numbers had not received a letter or a visitor in ten years, some not in twenty-five years. The refrain of one of their saddest songs repeats over and over, "She wont write me no letter, she wont send me no word, And I caint get a letter from home." No letters came from home or anywhere else. Those letters that I read were from sisters, mothers, wives, never one from a father, brother, or from men friends. Often the letters contained post office money orders for small sums - twenty-five cents, never more than a dollar. This money keeps the games going. Clear Rock, a Texas convict, boasted once to me that in successive crap games he had won the entire capital of more than two hundred Negroes- less than thirty dollars. All this money had come from letters from home. Convicts are everywhere furnished tobacco, sometimes a weekly amount in cash, to make purchases at the penitentiary Commissary or in a store run by a convict. I asked an old Negro man herding milch cows on the Penitentiary Farm at Parchman, Mississippi, how he came to get locked up. "My trigger got loose, Boss," and then he added the shocking detail, "Dat shotgun tore dat nigger nearly half in two." Another Negro murder justified his plight, "Me and another nigger was shooting craps. I made my pint and he wouldn't recognize it." They are shy of the word 'kill' and usually when not claiming innocence, they attempt to defend themselves. "If he hadn't kept on bodderin' wid me, I never would have hurt him." "I just got to shooting niggers an' couldn't stop," said Allen Prothers, a Tennessee boy, explaining how he had shot his wife's lover and then also a Chain Gang Negroes Page Five second boy friend bystander. "Boss, can't you help me get outa this place, I just naturally like it," said Black Sampson to me as I told him goodbye on leaving the Nashville Penitentiary. "Ninety-nine is a load on my shoulders dat I can't shake off." Every convict longs for freedon. He longs for it and sings about it. A Texas Negro sang, "Ef I had a sentence like ninety-nine years, All de dogs in de Brazis wouldn't keep me here." "Aint but de two things, dat worries my mind, My cheatin' woman an' my great long time." "Dat peafowl done holler an' dat turkle done maon; I'm a po' boy in trouble an' a long way from home." Over in Mississippi another boy in trouble plead his innocence, explained his hard luck, "Aint but de one thing dat I done wrong, Stayed in Mississippi one day too long." The Chain gang Negro wishes his freedom and he craves his woman in a burst of romantic fantasy: "Oh, yonder comes Rosy In her mawning gown, An' the trimmin' on her apron How it do hang down." Or, in the mood of his almost great good humour, he can sing: "Wuzzent for de powder an' de sto' bought hair Dese Mississippi women wouldn't get nowhere." Among the penal institutions that allow Negro women to visit their men at convict farms (no investigation is made as to whether or not they are wives) are Arkanasas, Texas and Mississippi. In some States provision is made for couples to be alone in private together for an hour of so. Prison wardens claim that this practice greatly lessens the danger of prison breaks among the Chain Gang Negroes Page Six blacks, which are spontaneous rather than the results of plots. Negroes do not trust each other. In speaking of the two races, one warden claimed that a dozen Negroes were easier to manage than one white convict. Perhaps the reason for this characteristic is found in this bit of Negro philosophy: "Listen, honey, I got six months outa de year to tends to my business an' de other six months to keep outa yours." For punishment usually the sloitary cell or the lash that the Negroes call the black heifer or Black Betty. They sing an axe cutting song personifying Black Betty, making her a woman: "Oh, Black Betty, Bam- ba - lam. Oh, Black Betty, Bam- ba - lam. Black Betty where'd you come from? Bam- ba - lam. I came from Corsicana Bam- ba - lam." And so, on and on, keeping quick time with their swinging axes. I have seen Black Betties hanging by the door of the men's dormitory, a grim threat for broken prison rules. The lash is commonly about four inches broad, so as to burn rather than cut the flesh, and four or five feet long. I saw no one whipped. I found no one in hospitals as a result of inhuman punishment. In Mississippi and in Arkansas, I heard of frequent whippings. A farm-superintendent in Arkansas complained of a sore right shoulder because that day he and a helper had whipped eighty cotton pickers for grabbing off so much trash with the cotton as to injure its market price. Some wardens claim that whipping for misconduct is more humane than solitary confinement on bread and water, that it subdues a rebellious man, and that, at the same time, it does not incapacitate a worker. He takes his whipping and goes on with his job. Chain Gang Negroes Page Seven The practice comes and goes in different States. Once very common in Texas, whipping is now infrequent. Everywhere I found that whites as well as blacks receive identical punishment. In the deep South more Negro convicts are whipped because there are more of them. Frequently I watched gangs of field workers march in at nightfall. Every man then stripped, took a hot bath, put on clean clothes and ate supper. Quiet and to bed at nine, for daylight means breakfast. In the farm dormitories the lights are never turned off. In Louisiana the men sing a song "Down in Angola, Angola, where the lights burn all night long." Otherwise,it was explained, a convict with a private grudge could slip out of bed in the darkness and knife his enemy. The beds were neat and comfortable and clean. No vermin. Everywhere the food was plain but abundant. My son and I ate it for months and thrived. Some of the farms run large dairies, raise hogs and cattle for meat, in one or two instances enough chickens are grown to serve eggs twice a week. On one Texas farm I found two convicts who called themselves "Chicken men" since their duty was to care for a thousand or so white leghorn hens. While always well ventilated, the farm dormitories seemed in some instances over-crowded. A common practice was for the men to dash from their quarters at headlong speed when the dorrs were opened in mornings for the march to the fields. But I saw no group forced to trot to the fields or to trot back at night. One rainy afternoon in Louisiana, I saw a large group of Negroes come slogging through the mud from the cane fields. They looked spent and utterly exhausted. Probably the dreary rain, semi-darkness, the sordid gloom of the prison camp added to their despair and dejection. I felt the depression. That group gave me no songs. Out in a Texas prison camp the Chain Gang Negroes Page Eight Negroes sing a slow work song the words of which fit the mood of those weary Mississippi boys. Calling the sun "Old Hannah, dot hot broiling sun turnung over" the song runs: "I looked at Old Hannah an' she's turnin' red, I looked at my pardner an' he's almost dead. Go down Old Hannah, don't you rise no mo', If you rise any mo' bring Jedgment Day!" Unfortunately, penitentiaries, like institutions for the insane, reform schools, and other homes for social dependents, with officers appointed through political influence, have too few interested visitors. What goes on inside of such places is sometimes a grave reflection on organized society. Moreover, prison managements cannot know always what happens when inhuman guards are away with a gang of men. Guards are generally underpaid and sometimes are unable to live with their families. The work is brutalizing. No and then terrible conditions come to light. Happily I escaped being a witness. In Louisiana and in Mississippi, all the guarding is done by long term convicts. No official in the Mississippi system is permitted to carry a gun. Thus the expense for upkeep is greatly reduced. Since I visited Angola, Louisiana, a group of white convicts at a Sunday afternoon baseball game over-powered the guards, killed one and escaped. Among the searching parties were some of the Negro trusty convict guards. Two of these Negroes, armed with rifles, came on the hunted white man. In a battle the Negroes, as I got the report, killed the white men, and returned to serve out their time. As will be well understood in the South, the whites and Negroes eat and sleep in separate quarters, usually work in different groups, and hold separate religious services. One Sunday in the penitentiary at Richmond, I was surprised when attending a chapel service to listen to a sermon by a Negro Chaplin preached to an audience about equally of Negroes and whites, who sat Chain Gang Negroes Page Nine with an aisle between. The two chaplains, one white and one black, preach on alternate Sundays. Probably because they are more easily controlled, nearly all the road gangs I saw were made up of Negroes. Doubtless also, they have better training and more physical endurance for such labor. I saw no examples of discrimination in food or quarters between the two races. In Mississippi and in Arkansas, Negro trusties with high powered rifles guard the other Negro convicts, white trusties watch the white convicts. Being more adaptable, the Negro convicts seemed far happier that the whites. Certainly they were easier to talk to. They were always willing,even eager, to sing into my microphone. And some of their songs were touchingly beautiful. As they sang in groups with resonant powerful voices, they seemed to forget their plight, the iron bars, guards on watch with guns in their hands. And when I played the records back to them, they would shout out their delight, greeting with merry laughter some vocal slip of their companions caught by the machine. At such times they seemed light-hearted, happy men. Perhaps, however, as one of their songs goes, "When you see me laughin' I'm laughin' to keep from cryin'." For indeed to the Negro especially, loss of liberty is a punishment not a method of reformation. One singer complained, "Well, de Captin called me a nappy headed devil, Dat aint my name, it made me mad." Describing the shifting changes of Chain gang life another song says, "Some on de right of way, some on de farm, Some on de Chain gang, some goin' home." But the prevailing note of the long term man is "On a Monday I got 'rested On a Tuesday I was tried On a Wednesday I got my sentence On a Thursday hung my head and cried I'm a chain gang man, aint got no home." Chain Gang Negroes "Ninety-nine years on de hard, hard ground, 'Member de night you blowed de woman down? De Jedge he found me guilty, de clerk he wrote it down; Next cold winter mornin' I was penitentiary bound. Here I am for de rest of my nachul life, And all I ever done was to kill my wife." ----------------------------- One night recently in the auditorium of the Press Club Building of washington I played some phonograph records of Negro work songs I had made for the Library of Congress from the singing of Negro convicts in the South. "They were so pathetic," said a lady to me afterwards; "so like the singing I have just heard in Florida - Negro chain gangs, you know?" "Just what do you mean by a 'chain gang'?" For I had not understood the term when I started out to visit Southern penitentiaries. "Oh, all these Negro men were tied together by a chain running from one leg to another and, just think, at each end of a line of these working men a guard sat on his horse with a shot gun in his hands!" she went on in tones of horror. As it happened, I had recently come from a week's stay at the Florida penitentiary. Afterwards, I had travelled the entire length of the State visiting the gangs of Negro convicts at work on the public roads. I had talked with the guards, with the various assistant wardens and with the superintendent. Chain Gang Negroes - Part Two I had been left alone for hours with the convicts themselves. I had never seen two men chained together. I had never seen a chain of any sort. Whatever Florida's record, under the present management [,] a guard who uses an oath to any convict, black or white, is instantly discharged. The men at work on the road gangs, chosen after an examination by a physician, looked physically fit. I saw no instance of brutal treatment. I heard of none. During the past two years, I have visited the Negroes confined in the penitentiaries of the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia - the men in the walls as well as the men at work on the public roads. I have carried letters either from the Governors or Prison Commissions of each of these States with instructions that permitted me to see and talk with the convicts. In many cases I have been left alone with the convicts for hours - in the dining room, the chapel, the hospital and even in the execution room, where I could have quiet for recording Negro songs. All day on many Sundays and once an entire week behind the prison walls, I have been alone with the men. I have never seen a chain [of any sort] on any prisoner except in rare instances a road gang convict wore a chain strapped around his waist. "why?" I asked a guard. "Well, you will notice that the chain is so arranged that Chain Gang Negroes - Page Three when he starts to run, it will fall around his legs, rap his ankles and slow up his speed. We never put this contraption on a man except to keep him from running away." At the Penitentiary at Memphis, Tennessee, I noticed a number of Negro convicts each wearing a light two foot chain riveted into a clasp around his ankle. To keep the chain from dragging, each man had wrapped the chain about his ankle and stuffed the end into his shoe. "These men work on the highways that run through thick underbrush," the guard told me. "They are runaways. It is easy enough for a convict to slip away into the woods when the men are building a road through a dense forest. Today, as you see, it is raining. We have them inside shelling peas." And that is what they were doing - shelling garden peas for the cannery. There were hogsheads full of fresh green peas ready for canning, and a lot of convicts, still wearing road chains, seated around a long table tearing off the soft green pods as the rain poured outside. "But what is a Chain gang?" I asked this specific question of a penitentiary warden. "Is it a ground of convicts chained together?" "Hell, no," he said, "how could men get any work done all chained together? These men must do an honest day's work, impossible if their bodies did not have free play. A chain gang, as you hear the term used, means only a group of convicts Chain Gang Negroes - Page Four working on the road or elsewhere outside of the Penitentiary walls. It is a group that unhappily arouses a lot of prejudice and much misdirected and maudlin sympathy. Chain gang workers are freer, healthier and happier than those that live inside the walls. You never find one who does not prefer road work or farm work." In visiting the Negro convicts of the nine Southern States, I discovered many other things new to me. I travelled as the special guest of the Governor of each State and with commendation of the Chief Executive of my own State, Texas. I carried a machine to record for the Library of Congress the Negro songs of each State, I was making no investigation of what I saw - the conditions under which the men and women lived, their food and care, their treatment at the hands of the guards, etc. But I could not fail to get many impressions, all the more vivid because until I made this trip, I had never seen a penitentiary or been inside a jail. Naturally, then, I had many surprising experiences with the more than 20,000 black men and women I visited. Many forgotten men were among them. Numbers had not received a letter or a visitor in ten years, some not in twenty-five years. The refrain of one of their saddest songs repeats over and over, "She wont write me no letter, she wont send me no word, And I caint get a letter from home." No letters from home or anywhere else. Those letters that I read were from sisters, mothers, wives, never one from a Chain Gang Negroes - Page Five father, brother, or from men friends. Often the letters contained post office money orders for small sums - twenty-five cents, never more than a dollar. This money keeps the crap games going. Clear Rock, a Texas convict, boasted once to me that in successive crap games he had won the entire capital of more than two hundred Negroes - less than thirty dollars. All this money had come from letters from home. Convicts are everywhere furnished tobacco, sometimes a weekly amount in cash, to make purchase at the penitentiary Commissary or in a store run by a convict. I asked an old Negro man herding milch cows on the Penitentiary Farm at Parchman, Mississippi, how he came to get locked up. "My trigger got loose, Boss," and then he added the shocking detail, "Dat shotgun tore dat nigger nearly half in two." Another Negro murderer justified his plight, "Me and another nigger was shooting craps. I made my pint and he wouldn't recognize it." They are shy of the word 'kill' and usually when not claiming innocence, they attempt to defend themselves. "If he hadn't kept on bodderin' wid me, I never would have hurt him." "I just got to shooting niggers an' couldn't stop," said Allen Prothers, a Tennessee boy, explaining how he had shot his wife's lover and then also a second boy friend bystander. "Boss, can't you help me get outa this place, I just naturally don't like it," said Black Sampson to me as I told him goodbye on leaving the Nashville Penitentiary. "Ninety-nine is a load on my shoulders dat I can't shake off." Chain Gang Negroes - Page Six Every convict longs for freedom. He longs for it and sings about it. A Texas Negro sang, "Ef I had a sentence like ninety-nine years, All de dogs in de Brazis wouldn't keep me here." "Aint but de two things dat worries my mind, My cheatin' woman an' my great long time." "Dat peafowl done holler an' dat turkle done moan; I'm a po' boy in trouble an' a long way from my home." Over in Mississippi another boy in trouble plead his innocence, explained his hard luck, "Aint but de one thing dat I done wrong, Stayed in Mississippi one day too long." The Chain gang Negro wishes his freedom and he craves his woman in a burst of romantic fantasy: "Oh, yonder comes Rosy In her mawning gown, An' the trimmin' on her apron How it do hang down." Or, in the mood of his almost always great good humour, he can sing: "Wuzzent for de powder an' de sto' bought hair Dese Mississippi women wouldn't get nowhere." Among the penal institutions that allow Negro women to visit their men at convict farms (no investigation is made as to whether or not they are wives) are Arkansas, Texas and Mississippi. In some States provision is made for couples to be alone in private together for an hour or so. Prison wardens claim that this practice greatly lessens the danger of prison breaks among the blacks, which are spontaneous rather than the Chain Gang Negroes - Page Seven result of plots. Negroes do not trust each other. In speaking of the two races, one warden claimed that a dozen Negroes were easier to manage than one white convict. Perhaps the reason for this characteristic is found in this bit of Negro philosophy: "Listen, honey, I got six months outa de year to tends to my business an' de other six months to keep outa yours." For punishment usually the solitary cell or the lash that the Negros call the black heifer or Black Betty. They sing an axe cutting song personifying Black Betty, making her a woman: "Oh, Black Betty, Bam - ba - lam. Oh, Black Betty, Bam - ba - lam. Black Betty where'd you come from? Bam - ba - lam. I came from Corsicana Bam - ba - lam." And so, on and on, keeping quick time with their swinging axes. I have scene Black Betties hanging by the door of the men's dormitory, a grim threat for broken prison rules. The lash is commonly about four inches broad, so as to burn rather than cut the flesh, and four or five feet long. I saw no one whipped. I found no one in hospitals as a result of inhuman punishment. In Mississippi and in Arkansas, I heard of frequent whippings. A farm-superintendent in Arkansas complained of a sore right shoulder because that day he and a helper had whipped eighty cotton pickers for grabbing off so much trash with the cotton as to injure its market price. Some wardens claim that whipping for misconduct is more humane than solitary confinement on bread Chain Gang Negroes - Page Eight and water, that it subdues a rebellious man, and that, at the same time, it does not incapacitate a worker. He takes his whipping and goes on with his job. The practice comes and goes in different States. Once very common in Texas, whipping is now infrequent. Everywhere I found that whites as well as blacks receive identical punishment. In the deep South more Negro convicts are whipped because there are more of them. Frequently I watched gangs of field workers march in at nightfall. Every man then stripped, took a hot bath, put on clean clothes and ate supper. Quiet and to bed at nine, for daylight means breakfast. In the farm dormitories the lights are never turned off. In Louisiana the men sing a song "Down in Angola, Angola, where the lights burn all night long." Otherwise it was explained, a convict with a private grudge could slip out of bed in the darkness and knife his enemy. The beds were neat and comfortable and clean. No vermin. Everywhere the flood was plain but abundant. My son and I ate it for months and thrived. Some of the farms fun large dairies, raise hogs and cattle for meat, in one or two instances enough chickens are grown to serve eggs twice a week. On one Texas farm I found two convicts who called themselves "Chicken men" since their duty was to care for a thousand or so white leghorn hens. while always well ventilated, the farm dormitories seemed in some instances over-crowded. A common practise was for the men to dash from their quarters at headlong speed when the doors were opened in mornings for the march to the fields. But I saw Chain Gang Negroes - Page Nine no group forced to trot to the fields or to trot back at night. One rainy afternoon in Louisiana, I saw a large group of Negroes come slogging through the mud from the cane fields. They looked spent and utterly exhausted. Probably the dreary rain, semi-darkness, the sordid gloom of the prison camp added to their despair and dejection. I felt the depression. That group gave me no songs. Out in a Texas prison camp the Negroes sing a slow work song the words of which fit the mood of those weary Mississippi boys. Calling the sun "Old Hannah, dat hot broiling sun turning over" the song runs: "I looked at Old Hannah an' she's turnin' red, I looked at my pardner an' he's almost dead. Go down Old Hannah, don't you rise no mo', If you rise any mo' bring Jedgment Day!" Unfortunately, penitentiaries, like institutions for the insane, reform schools, and other homes for social dependents, with officers appointed through political influence, have too few interested visitors. What goes on inside of such places is sometimes a grave reflection on organized society. Moreover, prison managements cannot know always what happens when inhuman guards are away with a gang of men. Guards are generally underpaid and sometimes are unable to live with their families. The work is brutalizing. Now and then terrible conditions come to light. Happily I escaped being a witness. In Louisiana and in Mississippi, all the guarding is done by long term convicts. No official in the Mississippi system Chain Gang Negroes - Page Ten is permitted to carry a gun. Thus the expense for upkeep is greatly reduced. Since I visited Angola, Louisiana, a group of white convicts at a Sunday afternoon baseball game overpowered the guards, killed one and escaped. Among the searching parties were some of the Negro trusty convict guards. Two of these Negroes, armed with rifles, came on the hunted white men. In a battle the Negroes, as I got the report, killed the white men, and returned to serve out their time. As will be well understood in the South, the whites and Negroes eat and sleep in separate quarters, usually work in different groups, and hold separate religious services. One Sunday in the penitentiary at Richmond, I was surprised when attending a chapel service to listen to a sermon by a Negro Chaplain preached to an audience about equally of Negroes and whites, who sat with an aisle between. The two chaplains, one white and one black, preach on alternate Sundays. Probably because they are more easily controlled, nearly all the road gangs I saw were made up of Negroes. Doubtless also, they have better training and more physical endurance for such labor. I saw no examples of discrimination in food or quarters between the two races. In Mississippi and in Arkansas, Negro trusties with high powered rifles guard the other Negro convicts, white trusties watch the white convicts. Being more adaptable, the Negro convicts seemed far happier than the whites. Certainly they were easier to talk to. They were always willing, even eager, to sing into my microphone. And some of their songs were touchingly beautiful. As they sang Chain Gang Negroes - Page Eleven in groups with resonant powerful voices, they seemed to forget their plight, the iron bars, guards on watch with guns in their hands. And when I played the records back to them, they would shout out their delight, greeting with merry laughter some vocal slip of their companions caught by the machine. At such times they seemed light-hearted, happy even. Perhaps, however, as one of their song goes, "when you see me laughin' I'm laughin' to keep from cryin'." For indeed to the Negro especially, loss of liberty is a punishment not a method of reformation. One singer complained, "Well, de Captain called me a nappy headed devil, Dat aint my name, it made me mad." Describing the shifting changes of Chain gang life another song says, "Some on de right of way, some on de farm, Some on de Chain gang, some goin' home." But the prevailing note of the long term man is "On a Monday I got 'rested On a Tuesday I was tried On a Wednesday I got my sentence On a Thursday hung my head and cried I'm a chain gang man, aint [goin'] got no mo home." Transcribed and reviewed by contributors participating in the By The People project at crowd.loc.gov.