false 5 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 23:22:20 -0700 2009 Sun Aug 23 23:27:44 -0700 2009 The Bloody Shirt, about the vicious Southern campaign to destroy any semblance of progress, which started about three minutes after the Civil War ended), but nothing about this whole Southern edifice of compelled labor (ie slavery) that cropped up around the turn of the century and lasted until WWII. Local courts complied, law enforcement raked in cash for sentencing hapless local African-Americans for vagrancy, the federal government messed around for a few minutes and then withdrew its support. I suppose we should all be embarrassed, since the reviews pretty uniformly say that the story was hidden from view, but still. As Blackmom mentions, the worst historical irony is that all the famous chain-gang stories (I Was a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, Cool Hand Luke, deal with the more or less insignificant problem of white chain-gang inmates.]]>