“The Jail House Is Full of Blues”

Abstract

During the 1930s, prisoners—especially if they ever worked on a chain gang—became favored subject matter in American popular culture. Examples of this interest appear in literature, film, and photography. In his 1932 social-realist novel Georgia Nigger, veteran reporter John Spivak details with words and photographs the suffering he discovered in one southern state’s prison and its chain gangs. That same year saw the release of Robert E. Burns’s autobiography I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang!. The author had actually served time on a chain gang, escaped, and founded a successful advertising firm. Later, through an unjust twist, Georgia authorities deceived him by promising a pardon if he returned to the state and then forced him to continue to serve the rest of his sentence—again working on a chain gang—although he managed to escape again. Also in 1932, Warner Brothers Pictures acquired the rights to this book and then rushed out the surprise hit movie of the same name starring Paul Muni. In 1937, Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell came out with their very popular word-and-picture collaboration, You Have Seen Their Faces, which contained several images of southern chain-gang members resting at roadside. Various photographers of the Depression-Era Farm Security Administration also documented the lives of inmates in southern prisons, and these images then received widespread attention. In fact, the public’s fascination with chain gangs in the 1930s became so widespread in popular culture that director Preston Sturges parodied it in his 1941 comedy Sullivan’s Travels.