the problem of the expense and difficulty of housing convicts remained. Chain gangs developed as a popular solution to that problem. Chain gangs were groups of convicts forced to labor at tasks ...

Eventually, many southern states stopped leasing out their convict laborers, instead keeping them to work on public projects in chain gangs.

Working on the chain gang, no more’—was an American pop song of the 1980s. Chain gangs, if you don’t know, were groups of ...