On the Chain Gang

Linked to Communists

Share Feedback

Radical journalist John Spivak wrote the pamphlet "On the Chain Gang" for International Pamphlets, a series of propaganda tracts published by the Communist Party. Spivak's investigations into Georgia's chain gangs provided the basis for his novel Hard Times on a Southern Chain Gang (1932), which exposed the system's abuses and contributed to its reform.

On the Chain Gang