East Texas, Piedmont, and the Mississippi Delta Regions
EAST TEXAS
Slavery's Last Refuge
Intro: "Another Man Don' Gone"
East Texas holds a rich tradition in blues music with blues musicians like Huddie Ledbetter, aka *"Leadbelly, "*Blind Lemon Jefferson (Father of Texas Blues), Influential Texas blues guitarist, *Ragtime "Henry Thomas, and Alger "Texas" Alexander, who helped popularize blues music born in the cotton fields, to name a few artists who left their distinctive style upon the music. Today, however, we focus not on the Texas Blues musicians but on the Texas work song tradition.
Prison farms were established along the Brazos River in East Texas, where Texas used convict labor for public works projects and farming thousands of acres of farmland. The convicts were leased to private operators. This practice was adopted by other southern penal institutions, including Cummings Prison Farm in Grady, Arkansas (which covered some 16,500 acres since 1902), Missouri State Prison in Jefferson City, MO (which operated from 1836 to 2004), Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, LA, and Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman,Mississippi.
In David M. Oshinsky's book, "Worse than Slavery,"- Mississippi State Penitentiary, aka Parchman Farm, was described as the closest thing to slavery that survived The Civil War. Quickly, the formerly enslaved people learned they could no longer count on the protection that went along with being the master's valuable property. In prison, an inmate could be overworked, underfed, beaten senseless, and left to die. There was no one to protect the inmates from savage beatings, endless workdays, and criminal neglect.
Many wardens were not penologists, but experienced plantation managers hired by the state to oversee government-run cotton and sugar cane plantations.
Convicts often dealt with the pain of severe punishment at the hands of untrained racists and sadistic guards who were still angry over the South's humiliating defeat during the Civil War. The infamous Texas prison farm system was indirectly responsible for the survival of the work song tradition.
Work songs had three primary functions:
1) They helped supply a rhythm of work or synchronized rhythm of movement.
2) They helped to pass the time while performing tedious tasks.
3) They offered an outlet for frustration and anger
Although work songs were prevalent across all southern states, the tradition of work songs in Texas was particularly noteworthy. These songs were composed to the rhythm of sledgehammers, picks, and axes. They narrated tales of women left behind, the prison guards, the sound of bloodhounds on the trail of escapees, the captains, the memory of freedom they once had, and the gnawing unrelenting loneliness of the convicted murderers and vagrants who were punished for being homeless. The incarcerated individuals expressed their emotions of love, separation, and oppression, all while performing their back-breaking labor.
EXAMPLE: (Big Leg Rosy and Women in Prison)
Today, work songs have dwindled to a halt, and work conditions have changed.The modern-day inmates have traded their sledgehammers, pics, and axes for law libraries, cooking classes, SIMPLE BROOMS, and email.
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