Virginia author Earl Swift, whose bestselling account of Tangier Island, “Chesapeake Requiem,” captured national attention six years ago, has brought to the public another relatively unknown story. This one is of 20th century peonage or debtor slavery.
“Hell Put to Shame: The 1921 Murder Farm Massacre and the Horror of America’s Second Slavery” (Mariner Books, 432 pgs., $32.50) does not mince words; it is forthright, factual and describes a hell on earth for those caught up in the diabolical story.
As Swift points out, slavery in the South did not end with emancipation or the Civil War. In many Southern states slavery continued as plantation owners went to jails throughout the region to pay a “criminal’s debt.” As a result, Black men worked for white men who freed them, often without compensation and under threats of death if they left.
Therefore, for them slavery continued. They could still never be free.
Swift sheds light on a specific case in Newton County, Georgia, where John S. Williams, a farm owner of 325 acres, caused the murder of 11 Black men within several weeks in an effort to keep the peonage he undertook secret from law enforcement officials.
According to New York Times reviewer John Knight, “Swift shines a powerful light on the practice of debt slavery, and notes that it persists to this day as human traffickers continue to coerce immigrants to work on farms across the U.S.”
Williams, a white man, was convicted on the testimony of a Black man, Clyde Manning, in 1921 when white people rarely faced punishment for any violence against Black citizens, asserts Swift.
It all began when a young boy discovered in Georgia’s Yellow River the bodies of two Black men tied up with wire and chains and weighted down by a 100-pound sack of rocks. Later four other bodies, in a similar fashion, were found in adjacent waters.
Still later, Manning told FBI personnel that more Black men were buried on Williams’ property and showed them the sites. His testimony, never shaken by defense attorneys, held up for the public throughout the state, the nation and the Newton County jury.
As all this was breaking in Newton County, the Georgia governor pushed law enforcement officials to pursue Williams from a variety of angles and for a variety of reasons, not all wholesome. Also involved in the story was James Weldon Johnson, the first Black leader of the NAACP, whose organization rose to fight peonage.
In conclusion, Swift looked back on the plight of one of the Black men who perched on the bridge overlooking the river. “He might have realized, perched there, that he would be missed by few. He might have understood he would be as overlooked in death as he was as a peon.
“The shame of it — one of so many shames — is that he would have been right.”
Way back in southwest Virginia
John W. Peace II always thought his “Papaw” — Capt. Jimmie Galloway — was worth a story, but he did more than that in compiling a book, “A Boy from Crackers Neck” (Triumph Press, 298 pgs., $19.98).
Peace’s grandfather (1920-2015) was a multidecorated World War II B-17 bomber pilot from 1943 until the end of the war. Galloway’s own air fight stories and ground accounts show the efforts needed to get a single plane and crew ready for combat.
However, what’s memorable about Peace’s book is the description of Papaw’s life in and around Big Stone Gap in the years before war.
The Rev. Garrett W. Sheldon of Big Stone Gap’s First Baptist Church said Peace’s narrative reminded him of “The Waltons” television show, “except it was set in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. Peace captures the distinctive society and values of rural Virginia” from farming to coal mining and church, family and community.
He also provides oodles of information, moving accounts and some wry humor.
For example, Papaw, then 71, was watching television in February 1991 as Army Gen. Colin Powell and Commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. discussed the U.S. bombers dropping “smart bombs” or bunker blusters from tens of thousands of feet above Iraq.
As he watched, Papaw exclaimed: “Hot damn Son, if we had some of these smart bombs back in WWII, me and the boys could have won the war by ourselves.”
Wild West outlaws in the 19th century
I grew up in the age of Western heroes such as Hopalong Cassidy and the Lone Ranger and television cowboys such as Gene Autry and Roy Rogers. Against them, outlaws were a dime a dozen.
New York Times bestselling author Tom Clavin has made an important mark in Western lore with his new book, “The Last Outlaws: The Desperate Final Days of the Dalton Gang” (St. Martin’s Press, 288 pgs., $30).
This is the most recent volume in an unofficial Western series that includes “Tombstone,” “Wild Bill (Hickok)” and “Dodge City.” “Tombstone” features lawmen Doc Holliday, the Earp brothers — Virgil, Morgan and Wyatt — and the gunfight at the OK Corral, while “Dodge City” focuses on Wyatt Earp and Bat Masterson (Remember “Gunsmoke” with Marshal Matt Dillion was fiction).
Probably, the much feared and legendary Dalton Gang was second in Western folklore only to the James brothers in followers both then and now. The gang included Jesse and his brother Frank James, based in Missouri after the Civil War, along with Cole Younger and other fluctuating members.
The Dalton Gang principally included brothers Emmett, Bob, Bill and Grat Dalton and a host of robbery conspirators.
Clavin has compiled a rip-roaring true story of the Daltons at their very best and worst — beginning as common horse thieves and finishing as bank and train robbers.
However, it was in Coffeyville, Kansas, on Oct. 5, 1892, that the Daltons met their match, as Clavin points out. They attempted their “boldest and bloodiest raid yet,” hitting two banks in broad daylight. Townspeople had recognized some of the gang’s members and armed themselves to be ready for a gun fight when the outlaws exited the second bank. In the end, four of the five Dalton gang members were dead.
However, much better storytelling is Clavin’s chronicle of Dalton Gang members and their wide ride of crime over just two years, 1890-92. By the way, Grat and Bob Dalton were lawmen before beginning their crime spree.
Have a comment or suggestion for Kale? Contact him at Kaleonbooks95@gmail.com.
