Quotes about Chain Gangs

Howard Association

A Committee of Investigation in South Caroline lately found a number of innocent persons in convict stockades. They were being chained, flogged and cruelly overworked

Named after penal reformer Johne Howard, 1726-1790. Howard Associations have since been organized in many countries.

Joe Arpaio

I'm an equal opportunity incarcerator.

The sheriff not only operated chain gangs in the 1990's but also had female prisoners chained together doing road work.

Shawn Amos

From chain gangs to folk songs to intelligent soul, America has created musicians dedicated to truth, justice, and a better American Way.

Howard Association

Very cruel punishments are inflicted in some of the convict camps, such as scores of lashes on the bare back, for slight offences. Women also are brutally flogged.

Named after penal reformer Johne Howard, 1726-1790. Howard Associations have since been organized in many countries.

Nancy Isenberg

Dependency had long defined the South. Since the 1870s, impoverished sharecroppers and convict laborers, white as well as black, had clung to the bottom rung of the social order. It may be hard for us to fathom, but the convict population was no better off than southern slaves had been.

William Petty

Why should not insolvent Thieves be rather punished with slavery then death? so as being slaves they may be forced to as much labour, and as cheap fare, as nature will endure, and thereby become as two men added to the Commonwealth, and not as one taken away from it;

This objection to capital punishment is an economic one. The colonies needed labor badly. Petty argued that if a criminal were executed the society would lose 1 laborer whereas if he were made a slave, then 1 laborer will be gained. Note that his assumption, typical of the times, that a rich thief would pay a fine but a poor one be executed.

Joe Arpaio

Everything I did in the jails - chain gangs, everything - I haven't changed the policy. I did it, I stand by it, and I'm not going to change.

Nancy Isenberg

The South’s transportation infrastructure and expanded industrial base was built on the backs of chain gangs. States raked in tremendous revenues by leasing prisoners to private businesses. Historically, the majority of these laborers were black, but during the Depression more poor whites found themselves swept up in the system.

She was referring to the last half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. The point was one of the explanations of President Franklin Roosevelt’s Quotation 643956.

Chain Gangs Quotes