de Earl Swift
""Hell Put to Shame is a powerfully unsettling portrait of both the single most savage episode in the long decades of savagery inflicted by white southerners on their Black neighbors in the 20th century—and the methodical process that followed to erase those crimes from America's collective memory."" —Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping new work of narrative nonfiction telling the forgotten story of the mass killing of eleven Black farmhands on a Georgia plantation in the spring of 1921—a crime which exposed for the nation the existence of the "peonage system," a form of legal enslavement established after the Civil War across the American South.
On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another, nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them, a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South, in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War.
Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing, and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before.
By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political expose, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when White people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. Georgia Governor Hugh M. Dorsey had earned international infamy while prosecuting the 1913 Leo Frank murder case in Atlanta and consequently won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists—then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. And Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end.
The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
""Hell Put to Shame is a powerfully unsettling portrait of both the single most savage episode in the long decades of savagery inflicted by white southerners on their Black neighbors in the 20th century—and the methodical process that followed to erase those crimes from America's collective memory."" —Douglas A. Blackmon, author of Slavery by Another Name, winner of the Pulitzer Prize
From the acclaimed New York Times bestselling author of Chesapeake Requiem comes a gripping new work of narrative nonfiction telling the forgotten story of the mass killing of eleven Black farmhands on a Georgia plantation in the spring of 1921—a crime which exposed for the nation the existence of the "peonage system," a form of legal enslavement established after the Civil War across the American South.
On a Sunday morning in the spring of 1921, a small boy made a grim discovery as he played on a riverbank in the cotton country of rural Georgia: the bodies of two drowned men, bound together with wire and chain and weighted with a hundred-pound sack of rocks. Within days a third body turned up in another, nearby river, and in the weeks that followed, eight others. And with them, a deeper horror: all eleven had been kept in virtual slavery before their deaths. In fact, as America was shocked to learn, the dead were among thousands of Black men enslaved throughout the South, in conditions nearly as dire as those before the Civil War.
Hell Put to Shame tells the forgotten story of that mass killing, and of the revelations about peonage, or debt slavery, that it placed before a public self-satisfied that involuntary servitude had ended at Appomattox more than fifty years before.
By turns police procedural, courtroom drama, and political expose, Hell Put to Shame also reintroduces readers to three Americans who spearheaded the prosecution of John S. Williams, the wealthy plantation owner behind the murders, at a time when White people rarely faced punishment for violence against their Black neighbors. Georgia Governor Hugh M. Dorsey had earned international infamy while prosecuting the 1913 Leo Frank murder case in Atlanta and consequently won the statehouse as a hero of white supremacists—then redeemed himself in spectacular fashion with the "Murder Farm" affair. The remarkable polymath James Weldon Johnson, newly appointed the first Black leader of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, marshaled the organization into a full-on war against peonage. And Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, a light-skinned, fair-haired, blue-eyed Black man, conducted undercover work at the scene of lynchings and other Jim Crow atrocities, helping to throw a light on such violence and to hasten its end.
The result is a story that remains fresh and relevant a century later, as the nation continues to wrestle with seemingly intractable challenges in matters of race and justice. And the 1921 case at its heart argues that the forces that so roil society today have been with us for generations.
Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.
Critiques-
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Starred review from February 12, 2024
The 1921 spree killing of 11 Black men in rural Jasper County, Geo., and the subsequent trial of the white man responsible uncovered the ugly underbelly of peonage, “a form of slavery that had survived in the South for generations after Appomattox,” according to this propulsive history from bestseller Swift (Chesapeake Requiem). In a system created by plantation owners in coordination with local police, a young Black man would be arrested for a trumped-up offense, jailed, and charged with exorbitant fines, which a white farmer would offer to pay in return for the prisoner’s labor. However, as Swift explains, once on the farm, the prisoner would be forbidden to leave, “trapped in what amounted to debt slavery.” Federal agents at the Bureau of Investigation, tipped off by an escapee, went to Georgia to interview plantation owners about the illegal practice, including John S. Williams, who proceeded to kill 11 of his farmhands in a two-week span to cover up earlier murders and peonage on his plantation. As a result of the eyewitness testimony of Clyde Manning, another captive who served as Williams’s de facto overseer, an all-white jury convicted Williams, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The ease of reading Swift’s efficient prose belies its elegance: “Soon the houses fell away, and the cotton rose, and they were in the country.” This is a must-read. -
May 31, 2024
Swift (Across the Airless Wilds) takes listeners to 1921 Jasper County, GA, where 11 Black men were brutally murdered at a former plantation known as the Murder Farm. Two of the men, weighed down with sacks of rocks and submerged in a nearby river, were discovered by a young boy; soon after, the bodies of the other nine men were found. Authorities suspected that farm owner John S. Williams was behind the murders, and a high-profile investigation and court case ensued. This shocking account uncovers the brutal history of peonage, a form of enslavement that persisted after the close of the Civil War and was directly responsible for the men's deaths. Swift describes how James Weldon Johnson, the NAACP's first Black leader, and Johnson's lieutenant, Walter F. White, worked to infiltrate this violent underground and shed light on ongoing atrocities in the South. Narrator Mark Deakins offers a stunning performance of this groundbreaking case and the determined men who brought Williams to justice. Deakins's narration is atmospheric and tense as he tells this heart-wrenching tale and describes the horrors inflicted on these and so many other individuals. VERDICT An outstanding and highly recommended blend of history, police procedural, and courtroom drama.--Elyssa Everling
Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
