The Odd Amalgam: John L. Spivak’s 1932 Photographs,
Undercover Reporting, and Fiction in Georgia Nigger
Ronald E. Ostman
Department of Communication
Cornell University
and
Berkley Hudson
School of Journalism
University of Missouri-Columbia
Paper presented to the Visual Studies Division
International Communication Association
Dresden, Germany
June 20, 2006
Lincoln Steffens (1866-1936), who generally is cited as the first muckraking
journalist, called John L. Spivak (1897-1981) “the best of us.” Spivak, among many
progressive and muckraking writers of America’s early 20th century who might have
competed for the honor, was labeled by some of his contemporaries as “the best reporter …
in the whole United States at the present moment,” “America’s greatest newspaper man,”
“one of the alertest reporters alive,” and “greatest reporter since Lincoln
Steffens” (Florinsky, 1936).
Spivak, Who?
Yet today Spivak is almost unknown among journalism and communication
historians and scholars. Perhaps this neglect is due to his ideology. He began as a socialist,
was quickly disillusioned, and became a thinly disguised communist (Goode, 1997; Gross,
1935). He was blacklisted during the McCarthy era of suppression and was imprisoned
several times for his alleged libelous writings. Or, perhaps his current neglect is due to his
many violations of ethical standards (by today’s standards) in the ways he went about
investigating and reporting. Or maybe he’s been forgotten because he did not report
exclusively for the “objective” mainstream newspapers of the era, often preferring instead
such outlets as the communistic Daily Worker, the leftist New Masses, the short-lived
exposé magazine Ken, the New Haven Union (CT), the socialistic Call, the Charleston
Gazette (WV), trashy pulp magazines like True Strange Stories, and the like (North, 1969).
When he did report and write for more reputable and known media and news services, his
day job work tended to be routine and without bylines, while his investigative passions
were spent on independent freelance inquiries that resulted in hard hitting and sensational
books (Fry [pseudonym], 1959; Spivak, 1929, 1930, 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1939a,
1939b, 1940, 1948).
However, historical and scholarly neglect of Spivak cannot be due to his absence
from many of the landmark cases and issues in American history. For example, Spivak was
at the center of witnessing and reporting public controversies such as the:
corruption of New York City and Washington, DC government officials and police,
birth and early struggles of the American Civil Liberties Union,
West Virginia coal strikes and labor-management unrest,
Sacco and Vanzetti trials,
use of faked so-called “communist” documents by high public officials,
Scottsboro “Boys’” trials,
sharp rise of anti-Semitic furor in the U.S. and abroad,
disappointments of the post-World War I world,
sham of prohibition and the rise of the gangster element,
fascist ideologies and German/Japanese spying at home and abroad that fueled the fires
leading to World War II,
alleged right-wing plot to overthrow the hated Franklin D. Roosevelt and the U.S.
government,
rise of federal committees investigating un-American activities leading to McCarthyism,
phenomenon of Father Charles E. Coughlin’s right-wing radio propaganda broadcasts and
illegal fund raising that fleeced a gullible public,
and the fraud perpetuated by mail-order magazine subscription services sold door-to-door.
John L. Spivak, Prisoner in a Seminole County, Georgia, stockade. “On the Chain Gang,”
1932 (Stott, 1986).
Spivak Uses the ‘N’ Word
In addition to his reporting and writing, we examine Spivak’s creative use of
documentary photographs (Owens, 1978; Schwartz, 1999; Stryker, 1967; Stryker &
Johnstone, 1940; Tucker, 1984; Watkins, 1982). Spivak made several dozen images inside
Georgia chain gang camps in the early 1930s and published several in Georgia Nigger, a
fictional book based on his thorough underground “detective” investigation that collected
damning information through purloined government documents and records, interviews
with public officials and employees, and observations and conversations with men
imprisoned. Spivak’s book claimed that those men, primarily African-Americans, were
sometimes beaten or worked to death on chain gangs that meted out medieval methods of
diabolical pain and punishment. In addition to Spivak’s photographs, methods of operation,
and his visual and editorial decisions, we also address the aftermath of Georgia Nigger’s
publication. The book had great impact on the sympathetic intellectual left, which received
the photographs as “irrefutable” proof “that the master has not forgotten the ancient use of
the whip” (“As Others,” 1934). Another reviewer mentioned that the photographs and
accompanying official documents and records were convincing “support of his statements,
which might otherwise appear incredible to many of his readers” (“Miss Latimer’s Stories,”
1932). Brickell (1932) spoke of the photographs as a means of substantiating “the truth of
the story” and noted that public opinion would be aroused in order “to improve conditions
somewhat” (p. 2). However, other Spivak reviewers were more skeptical, commenting on
“distrust” of his anecdotes and descriptions (“The heavy hand,” 1936), his “misleading…
use of facts” and his crediting of “rumor and hearsay” (Sullivan, 1939), and referring to
him as a journalist “trained to get what (he) is after” (Chamberlain, 1935). In addition to
the critical and literary reviews of the book, we examine the aftermath of the book’s
publication and the public policy reactions to the gripping, sensational, and theretofore
largely unknown implications of Southern chain gangs and the cruel racism they not only
perpetuated, but actually accelerated after the Civil War, well into the 20th century.
Muckraking
Any overview of important approaches to journalism and news in the 20th century
(Deuze, 2006; Hamilton, 2006; Ryfe, 2006; Singer, 2006; Tewksbury, 2006) should
include “muckraking,” which held a certain sway from 1902 to 1912, after which it blended
into the Progressive movement (Weinberg & Weinberg, 1961), “high modernism” from the
1940s to 1980s (Hallin, 1992, 2006), the offshoot of “new journalism” especially
prominent in the 1960s and 1970s (Boynton, 2005; Gutkind, 1997, 1998, 2004; Hollowell,
1977; Johnson, 1971; Kerrane & Yagoda, 1997; Sims, 1984, 1990, 1995; Weingarten,
2005a, 2005b; Wolfe, 1973), and recognition of the highly fragmented media universe that
has accelerated on the American scene in recent decades. These movements are relevant to
understanding John L. Spivak’s journalistic efforts.
The “literature of exposure” eventually known as “muckraking” was roughly
synonymous with the Presidency of Theodore R. Roosevelt, who gave it its pejorative
name. Characterized more abstractly, muckraking was an in-depth American magazine
journalism of fact and the presentation of a “human face” concerning wrongdoing and
suffering. Muckrakers’ reports often were laced with direct or indirect criticism, but did not
suggest solutions (Miraldi, 2000). Articles were presented to a readership who at first
glimpse seemed wed to the status quo, but nonetheless was ripe for turmoil. A full
spectrum of U. S. wealth, privilege, status, and power was characteristic of the late 19th
and the early 20th centuries. On the one hand, it was an era of giant, greedy business
monopolies and political corruption, aided and abetted by an establishment, captive press
that increasingly was addicted to advertising revenues. On the other hand, a diverse,
poverty-stricken, increasingly urbanized population lived under strict codes of inequitable
conduct and benefit distribution dictated by class, race, and gender. Muckrakers identified
groups that were thought powerful and reprehensible, researched them, and wrote about
their activities in exposés calculated to undermine their continued abilities to be exploitive of
other oppressed groups (Lofland, Snow, Anderson, & Lofland, 2006).
Popular penny press and “yellow journalism” newspapers during the last decades
of the 19th century increasingly developed wider audiences by featuring often lurid and
sensational content (Schudson & Tifft, 2005). Adding improved halftone photoengraved
visual content to enhance traditional text messages further stimulated the success of the
penny press. Distribution networks continued to expand locally with street corner sales to
supplement subscriptions and broadening regional and even national circulations
attributable to the growth of railroad, telephone, and telegraph services (Becker & Roberts,
1992). These developments fostered similar trends in the theretofore-staid realm of
magazine publishing (Baker, 1945). Some journalists rebelled and sought to expose
conditions they felt were deplorable and corrupt. Their reform-oriented investigative
journalism benefited from supply and technological trends in mass production that lowered
costs. Their messages appealed to a huge new potential readership comprised of an
increasingly educated public disenchanted with the laissez faire.
Muckrakers were bold and passionate in their investigations and their willingness to
be blunt. Some told their stories using reportorial journalism. Others, such as Sherwood
Anderson, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Theodore Dreiser, Stephen Crane, Hamlin
Garland, and Frank Norris (Fitzpatrick, 1994; Mumford, 1968), told their stories in fiction
that sometimes was thoroughly researched and meticulously documented. A variety of
impulses drove the muckrakers, among them personal ideologies, a sense of adventure, and
a hatred of wrongdoing. These impulses and others stimulated the evangelical fervor that
characterized muckraking (Evensen, 2000). The motives of still other muckrakers might
have been self-aggrandizement and financial and led critics to suggest they were indulging
in sensationalism. Whatever their motives, their mission was to arouse public sentiments,
skepticisms, and indignations, with the expectation that society could reform through
legislation and new policies that, once enforced, would put an end to the evils and wrongs
the journalists exposed. They found huge, receptive audiences for their exposés and – from
time to time – a sympathetic President in the White House, for T. R. Roosevelt knew the
value of publicity and public relations.
Toward the end of the short period that muckrakers flourished, the businesses and
other interests they exposed played a role in their defeat by withholding advertising dollars
and through buyouts of their publications. However, an estimated 2,000 muckraking
articles had been printed in nationally circulated magazines from 1903 to 1912, although the
origins of muckraking are traceable to 1890 (Fitzpatrick, 1994). It is debated, but generally
understood that the foundation they laid led to later reforms by Presidents Woodrow
Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, extending their influence politically and socially
until the dawn of World War II (Cook, 1972; Miraldi, 2000; Shapiro, 1968; Weinberg &
Weinberg, 1961). Credit for later investigative reports centering on topics such as poverty
amidst plenty, the harmful effects of pesticides, and Presidential malfeasance also has been
claimed as progeny of the “hard-hitting, socially conscious, independent, and factually
investigative journalism” of the muckraking tradition (Fitzpatrick, 1994, p. 114), although
the conditions faced by investigative reporters today and their motivations are vastly
different from those of muckrakers at the beginning of the twentieth century (Good, 2000).
The muckrakers before him had examined race in America and found conditions
very bad for African Americans. Their method – outsiders who went out among the people,
listening and seeing with fresh eyes for themselves, being taken for ordinary Joes because
they didn’t announce their real purpose – was similar to Spivak’s and the corruptions they
exposed certainly had not disappeared by the time Spivak rose to the challenge of
documenting racial injustice in Georgian chain gangs (Regier, 1932). Ray Stannard Baker,
a Northerner, wrote on “The Clashes of Races in A Southern City” (Atlanta, Georgia) for
American Magazine in 1907, for example. Baker vividly described the strict norms and
laws that separated white from black in every facet of life and provided the backdrop to
mob lynching and race riots. Baker’s engaging use of dialogue, setting, and narration was
commingled with history, sociology, politics and anything else that served to elucidate the
social problems he witnessed (Baker, 1908; Chalmers, 1958). In a brief passage in his
well-known “Following the Color Line” (1908), Baker put his finger on an institutional
reason for the perpetuation of the chain gangs that Spivak would later address in Georgia
Nigger. This was the fact that many more African Americans were arrested than whites,
even when the same crime was in question. Secondly, Baker pointed out that whites who
were sentenced often were assessed more lenient punishments than African Americans
sentenced for similar crimes. Third, the state and counties benefited from public works
projects from prisoner labor on chain gangs, or financially when convict labor sometimes
was leased to private contractors (Cable, 1885; Roberts, 1960; Taylor, 1942a, 1942b). And
finally, the state had no incentive to try to reform sentenced criminals. A cheap labor source
could always be ensured, even if those charged were innocent. One senses that Baker, like
many other muckrakers, identified with “terrorized Negroes” and others on the “underside
of American capitalism” (Swados, 1962). Indeed, Filler (1976) credits muckrakers such as
Ray Stannard Baker, Richard Barry, Benjamin Orange Flower, Charles Edward Russell,
Carl Schurz, Lincoln Steffens, William English Walling and Willis D. Weatherford as
working relentlessly during 1905 to 1915 to keep race relations and inequality in the
American news and to foster public awareness of race as an important social issue,
eventually leading to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP).
New Journalism
Tom Wolfe’s four defining characteristics of the “new journalism” (a disputed term
to describe the nuanced concoction of journalism and fiction popularized in the 1970s) are
often cited: depicting people in dramatic scenes through storytelling; using complete
dialogue as it occurred, rather than sound bites and fragments of conversation; using a
variety of authorial/observational points of view; and close attention to and description of
telling details, such as mannerisms, gestures, and other details that characterize people in
subcultures and other social and cultural groups (Connery, 1992). None of this was new
under the sun and Spivak’s Georgia Nigger can be considered an extension of early trends
toward literary journalism by the muckrakers and a forecast of what literary journalism
might look like when it was in full bloom in the 1970s (Wolfe, 1973).
The muckrakers were innovative in their approach to American topics. They sought
fresh and dramatic anecdotes, took the reader to the intimacy of behind-the-scenes doings,
and presented a new cast of characters, re-enacting their skullduggery and shenanigans in
writing that showed exotic and mundane settings that no one had written about previously.
In matters of style and well as substance, the muckrakers were pacesetters. Lincoln
Steffens, for example, is analyzed as an early literary journalist (Parisi, 1992).
Spivak’s “Detective” Journalism
The term “high modernism” has been used to describe routine establishment
journalism of the type that Spivak did for his day jobs when he was with the conventional
press (Ryfe, 2006). His work was anonymous, claimed to present only straight facts in an
objective manner, used formulaic methods of expression, was not enterprising in that it did
not challenge the status quo, was founded on a standard routine and reportorial process that
featured the journalistic “beat ” and handouts. Nothing was looked at in deep context and
the ability to knock off a large volume of words in daily writing was the measure of a good
journalist. It’s apparent in reading his autobiography that Spivak was bored stiff with high
modernism and always found ways to escape the straitjacket which conventional journalism
imposed. His ideology forced him to be other than what his day jobs required and his
career is filled with job jumping and he often abandoned secure Establishment positions in
order to pursuit more serious concerns and social issues as a freelancer (Spivak, 1967).
The traditions of muckraking and literary journalism were well established by the
time Spivak came to write Georgia Nigger. However, these genres were not in vogue in the
early 1930s, as journalism was enmeshed in the mission of providing information provided
for the reader within a generally unimaginative formula and vehicle for delivery (Connery,
1992). Spivak’s work in his freelance mode serves as a forerunner. His “detective” style of
research involved deep examination of statistical data, informants and tipsters, hunches,
brash confrontation of principal suspects with enough research detail to make them believe
he had the goods on them when he in fact was still looking for major pieces of the puzzle, a
tough-guy persona that seemed to relish danger and bullying persons in positions of power
and authority, a faint regard for ethical principles when they got in the way of his
questioning mind, and an ego seeking praise and attention that seemed unquenchable.
Based on his ability to see the big picture with only partial data, he was willing to take a
leap into speculative and confrontational publication made to sound authentic, logical, and
air tight.
In Georgia Nigger, Spivak incorporated realistic dialogue, believable settings, and
a story that was fast-paced and dramatic with a message that had profound social import.
His characters, while occasionally veering off into archetype, were for the most part
believable and the reader could love or hate them. He forced the reader to use all the senses,
particularly tactile and olfactory, much more than most authors of fiction manage. His
narrative occasionally was flawed by brief ideologically inspired asides and explanations,
but even these were handled in ways that were not awkwardly obtrusive. Most importantly,
he claimed to have infallible proof of those abuses whereof he spoke in the form of
photographs of persons, situations, and incriminating documents.
Spivak’s Photography
Spivak’s photographs were powerful for their times (Tucker, 1984) and remain
fraught with emotional impact, which can be explored within the theoretic frameworks of
aesthetics theory (Dake, 2005; Zettl, 2005), visual rhetoric (Foss, 2005), reception theory
(Barbatsis, 2005), and the historical tradition of documentary photography analysis
(Denton, 2005; Stott, 1986).
Aesthetics theory instructs that beauty involves a created object, a maker (or
makers) of the object, and a viewer. Obviously, the maker and viewer may not agree on
their perceptions and interpretations of the object, although it usually is the maker’s
intention to stimulate a collaborative mutual set of perceptions and interpretations. Usually,
the maker and viewer disagree about something thought “ugly,” although if the maker
intended to make an ugly object they may agree. What apparently is critical in gaining the
viewer’s initial attention, gaze, and engagement is that the object contain inherent qualities
(such as complexity, unusual or novel relationships between elements, ambiguity, etc.) that
engender a reception of incongruity, unexpectedness, surprise and so on to challenge the
viewer’s sense of status quo, harmony, balance, and consistency. Such a state of unbalance
stimulates the viewer’s need to create meaning and explanation, to make sense of the new
object (Chaplin, 2006).
Thus, it is probable that Spivak chose to photograph unfamiliar scenes in a dramatic
way so as to challenge the viewer’s pre-existing sensibilities – whether of equality,
freedom, fair play, justice, and so on – with the intention of creating empathy and
compassion for other humans in trouble, distress, or pain. Once an imbalance has thus been
created, Spivak no doubt wished the viewer to experience unease and outrage and to take
action to challenge or change situations and behaviors, thus restoring a semblance of
balance to a formerly uncontested set of beliefs and consistent set of informational
understandings.
The sought responses can be manipulated further by the maker’s use of text with
information and argument to supplement the initial need on the part of the viewer to
understand the baffling or challenging photographic image. Thus, visual and textual
coordination often is considered part of the maker’s creative process if strategically planned
responses are intended (Chaplin, 2006; Rothstein, 1986) as part of the maker’s conscious
attempt to persuade and influence the behavior of the viewer (Foss, 2005). Moving from
strict theory to applied media aesthetics, in fact, concentrates on the basic image elements
that are purposively manipulated and controlled by the maker during the encoding process
with reasonably accurate and known probabilities of affecting viewer decoding, thus
maximizing potential for achieving intended purposes, often without obvious intent as
perceived by the viewer (Zettl, 2005).
By contrast, visual rhetoric approaches to photographic communication stress that
once the created visual object or symbolic product is intentionally made, “released,” and
becomes available to others to see and interpret, the actual meanings attributed to the object
by the viewers may be quite different from that intended by the maker. In analysis, this is a
shift from putting emphasis on the maker of the message to the viewer (listener, reader) of
the message (Foss, 2005; Kenney, 2005). Taken another step, reception theory focuses
more on receiver (audience) interaction with message and medium as a means of
understanding the creation of meaning and thus, communication (Barbatsis, 2005).
Through such analysis, it is possible to compare viewer-picture receptions and effects of
messages with maker intentions as established during the process of message creation in
order to assess the degree to which intended effect is in fact actually achieved.
This is difficult to do with historical data, of course, because maker intentions and
audience effects are often shrouded in elusive ambiguity and the researcher must deal with
vast amounts of missing data concerning the communication process and the social-cultural
milieu in which it took place. Thus, traditional historians have been well aware of the
limitations of their empiricism long before the post-modernists’ critiques of the 1990s.
Those limitations also include the differential and selective survival of primary data,
possible relativism of historical judgment and reconstruction, the simplicity of explanation
concerning a complex past, the tentative nature of theory construction, and so on.
Journalism historian David Paul Nord pointed out that many contemporary historians
prefer to look at text (and by extension, visual images) in “social, economic, religious, and
political context … some (historians) …. explored the contexts of production … (while)
others stressed the contexts of reception … (a text’s) meaning lies not in the text itself but
in the social contexts in which it was written, published, and read” (2003, p. 367). That this
requires the historian’s effort to transport the self back to an earlier time – often far outside
the parameters of personal experience and understanding, with the goal of reconstructing
those times and the people who produced and interpreted the historical text itself – makes
the task daunting.
Craig Denton’s writing on documentary photography acknowledges a debt to
media aesthetics theory, especially to the pragmatics of the approach as it exists in the
manufacture of texts and images. Denton defines documentary photography as the process
of “using pictures and supplementary written text to record information, tell a story, or
reveal a condition” (2005, p. 405), a definition that is similar to that of others (Rothstein,
1986) which seems to summarize Spivak’s purpose in Georgia Nigger except that Spivak
tended to subjugate photographs to text rather than vice versa (only one photograph, that of
a trussed convict on the ground, preceded the fictional story).
It is clear that Spivak’s ego interacted with his purpose. That he tried to tell the truth
as he saw it motivated his risky behavior in taking photographs in situ and including them
as evidence to substantiate the book’s claims. His story, for which he argued verisimilitude
to the reality of chain gangs, permitted him to exercise his personal assertions, judgments,
and beliefs in an engaging and even entertaining vehicle while at the same time allowing
himself the occasional luxury of directly addressing the reader as “you” in David’s place
(David Jackson is Spivak’s main character, a fictional African American chain gang
convict). That Spivak embedded most of the documentary photographs as appendix
embellishments was perhaps a jarring way to remind the reader: “See, this story I’ve just
told and which you’ve just read is true. It’s not just fiction, it’s really happening! Do
something about it! Let’s correct this terrible injustice.” In Spivak’s words, from the
postscript to Georgia Nigger (1932):
I thought it wise to tell the story of David’s efforts to escape from a monstrous
system, in the guise of fiction. But though all the characters in Georgia Nigger are
fictitious some of the scenes described are so utterly incredible that I feel an appendix of
pictures and documents are necessary in this particular work. The
pictures I took
personally in various camps and the documents are but a few of the many gathering dust in
the State Capitol in Atlanta.
… I do not believe that the overwhelming proportion of intelligent and
humane citizens of the south approves these conditions. In those representative
southerners, white and black, with whom I discussed my investigations and
showed the pictures and documents, I found a sense of startled horror and a desire to end
these things.
To those who are vaguely familiar with the lives in Georgia Nigger from
the shocking cases which reach the press from time to time, and who may think I
deliberately chose sensational and extreme instances for David to see and hear and pass
through, I make assurances that I have earnestly avoided that, not only
because it
would not have been a representative picture but because the extreme
cases are
unbelievable. (pp. 241-243)
The term “documentary,” as applied to Spivak’s photography, derives from the
Latin docere, meaning “to teach” about truth in society (Rothstein, 1986). The slide show
that accompanies this paper shows examples of Spivak’s chain gang photography and
draws from his own emotion-laden captions and passages from his fiction to illustrate the
interplay between text and visual image (see Appendix A). That interplay clearly
demonstrates Spivak’s passion experienced in regard to his subject and his strong desire
that the reader/viewer should do something about the injustices shown and described. Thus,
Spivak was not only providing information, he was teaching and persuading in a way that
provided proof or evidence (Rothstein, 1986).
It is doubtful that Spivak thought of himself primarily as a photographer, since most
of his creativity throughout his career was expressed through the written word. However,
he showed an intuitive sense for what communicated well visually and his exposures,
despite his elementary equipment and technique, were well composed, focused, and
exposed. Most of Spivak’s images were posed and it is likely that the photographs that
appear natural and candid actually were taken with bystanders’ or subjects’ knowledge that
he was using a camera. There is no requirement that documentary photographs be
completely candid (i.e., taken without the knowledge or awareness of those whose lives
and surroundings are documented) (Owens, 1978). Spivak was able to adopt the
perspective of the chain gang convict, particularly in his portrayal of torture. His images of
“hog-tied” prisoners, for example, employed a “from above” perspective in long and
medium shots, but Spivak’s close-ups were taken from ground level, where the convicts
were lying. He was willing to dirty his clothes to get an empathic image.
The End Satisfies the Means
Spivak’s camera work presented logistical, bureaucratic, legal, and ethical problems.
The government documents that he photographed in secret were done with great risk to
himself. First, he removed them without permission from where they were housed to a
location (his hotel room) where he could expose film with regard to focus and lighting.
Second, he would not have received permission to photograph them if he’d asked. Third,
what he did probably was illegal and he might have become a convict himself if he was
caught and tried. Fourth, he jeopardized his entire documentary mission in order to make
the photographs. And fifth, in the case of photographs made of convicts on the chain
gangs, Spivak succeeded because he pretended to be someone he was not and gave
untruthful reasons to authorities and officials who questioned the need for his photographs.
From a newspaper and magazine perspective, Spivak’s photography was frequently
altered for publication. Overexposed areas of the image were darkened to dramatize detail.
Extensive cropping was used to highlight areas of most dramatic interest and to eliminate
setting and incidental details. Backgrounds were eliminated to reduce distractions.
However, the images reproduced in his book were used in unaltered state. At least, we have
found no evidence that Spivak or his book publisher altered his photographs in Georgia
Nigger. However, the Daily Worker, a communist newspaper that serialized the novel, did
alter his photographs by cropping, whiting out and obliterating backgrounds, and
emphasizing lines and details by darkening them (see Appendix A). The book also was
serialized in the Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune and the Milwaukee (Wisconsin) Journal
(Lichtenstein, 2005), extending its reach to mainstream Americans via the popular press.
Lascia (1999) pointed out that some people continue to have the naïve belief that
photographs literally represent some slice of reality, although that impression apparently is
declining as computer and digital alteration of images with computer software has become
so easy for professionals and amateurs alike. As a result, growing ethical standards have
dictated against decades-old practices of faking and retouching photographs for publication.
This enhances the reader/viewer’s inherent trust in news images, although doubts
legitimately are harbored. In recognition of the need to maintain credibility, “Today
retouching a news photo is forbidden at most publications, and faking a photo can be
grounds for dismissal” (Lascia, 1999, p. 128). For images other than news purposes,
however, standards are relaxed. In a trend away from Spivak’s type of photography, there
is a contemporary trend toward use of entertaining images as decoration rather than the use
of photographs for documentation and reportage (Lascia, 1999). This may be in response to
reader/viewer demand for such entertainment and the competition threatened by
entertainment and advertisement-financed media such as television. The audience often
expresses apathy or alienation toward media news, which the audience often thinks is
subtly biased. Apparently, levels of cynicism toward news media and those who produce
news content continue to rise (Kurtz, 1999). In Spivak’s time, the media were seen more
(and operated more) as watchdogs rather than lapdogs in service to the economic
marketplace.
Spivak’s Fiction
The genres of muckraking exposés and creative nonfiction were not new in 1932
when Spivak decided to expose the Georgia chain gangs in the form of fictional narrative.
Indeed, the creative nonfiction genre continues to produce sparkling results in today’s book
world (Gutkind, 2004; Sims & Kramer, 1995) and the muckraking genre appears to have
new life in the fragmented and diverse computer blog world of dedicated and
compassionate individualists and public service-oriented and special interest groups, such
as civil rights, environmentalist, and feminist groups (McChesney, 2004).
Writing about African Americans has been a matter of concern and controversy in
the United States for as long as there have been American authors. Early works tended
toward stereotype and caricature and the image of African Americans that was conveyed
was often demeaning and derogatory. In children’s books and stories, for example, there
has been controversy about such images as that of the title character of Little Black Sambo,
written by Helen Bannerman and published about 1900. It was not debated when first
available, but it was later criticized when race consciousness became more prominent. By
1947, May Hill Arbuthnot felt she needed to defend Little Black Sambo as a meritorious
story about an intelligent, lovable, and happy character (Arbuthnot, 1947). However,
Arbuthnot did note difficulties in many stories about African Americans. First, there was
the matter of spoken language and the use of a broad, little understood dialect as
supposedly issued from the mouths of African Americans, particularly those from the
South (also a concern of Mark Twain’s in his famous explanatory note about dialects used
in his Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, first published in 1885; see Hearn, 1981). Second,
Arbuthnot noted the increasing “natural sensitiveness of the Negro” (1947, p. 381) as
individuals and groups strove toward better education and standards of living in a world of
equal opportunity (she also might have noted the substantial opposition that countered
progress toward those goals). Third, she noted the dearth of books about African
Americans, much less books that struck a positive chord or sought to portray other than
caricatures of “less attractive and more backward members of the race” (p. 381). Donna E.
Norton’s (1991) more recent scholarship pointed out that a new set of terminology had
come into use concerning realistic fiction:
Such terms as relevant books, extreme realism, problem novel, and everyday
occurrences are found in critiques and discussions of contemporary realistic fiction
… (and this) implies that everything in a realistic story – including plot, characters,
and setting – is consistent with the lives of real people in our contemporary world.
(p. 408)
This type of literature tends to focus on conflict and problems and pits ordinary
people against antagonists in believable circumstances and settings. While it is true that
Spivak’s book addressed a mature, not a children’s, audience, Arbuthnot’s (1947) and
Norton’s (1991) observations apply equally as well. Considering Spivak’s textual genre as
extreme realism and his photography as documentary, then, requires an analysis of
character, dialogue, plot, setting, and pace as facets that will provide substance for a critical
analysis and understanding of Georgia Nigger.
Story about a “Monstrous” System
The main character of Spivak’s book, David Jackson, is an African American who
tells his story in the first person. He is a polite, hard working young man, a “good nigger”
eager to stay out of trouble. As he tells his father, who’d urged him to leave the
sharecropper’s home they lived in for a mill job in the city:
If I stays here an’ minds my own bus’ness dey ain’ nobody goin’ tuh trouble me. I
ain’ fixin’ tuh get uppity roun’ here. I’ll jes’ mind my own bus’ness an’ ten’ tuh my
wuk right here wid you. Dis place’s plenty good fo’ me. (p. 38)
As the story opens, he is serving his final day of a six-month sentence on the county chain
gang, serving as a laborer to work off a misdemeanor charge for a nonexistent crime. He
hadn’t served particularly hard time and didn’t even wear chains during his final few
months in the convict camp. Of course, the experience is no picnic and Spivak breaks the
spell of David’s first person perspective from time to time as the author lapses into direct
address to the reader, or “you,” with overt emotional propaganda, as in this early excerpt:
And when you sweat in a stinking cesspool all night you are too tired to pump
water to wash your face and hands even if you are given permission to go for it
yourself. It does not matter anyway. You soon forget that you want to be clean
when you dig dirt all day and sleep in it all night (pp. 10-11).
David has good-naturedly endured the travails of chain gang life and is well liked
by inmate and warden alike. In fact, the warden gives him a ride to his parents’ home after
he’s released. Idyllic descriptors are used to characterize his family’s sharecropper cabin:
peace, security, tranquility, potted red geraniums on the porch with their air of cheerfulness,
spotless rooms, and stove, pots and pans that are scrubbed shiny (a distorted perspective;
see Raper, 1936; Raper & Reid, 1941). His parents and siblings are devoted to one another,
but they suffer, as do all African Americans in those parts, from bad “luck.” Their farm
crops often fail due to weather and lack of sufficient labor, technique, and machinery. The
whites who essentially own them as a result of crooked financial deals cheat them. They get
the brush-off from political, financial, and legal systems run by elite whites and that
primarily exist for the benefit of plantation and farm owners. The African Americans
blindly accept their fate, believing what happens to them is determined by the Lawd.
Religion is their sole consolation, even though it is of the fire-and-brimstone variety.
However, before Sunday church meetings arrive, Saturday in town is a gala
occasion, a time for rural folk to do some socializing, a little shopping, and to sample
sinning.
There, a white planter named Deering, who has 70 acres of cotton that needs
picking and a sheriff who owes his position to the planter and the political power of other
elites, survey the African American crowd in late afternoon. They speculate on how the
planter will get enough labor to pick his cotton crops before they have to move into the
peanut farming season. The sheriff suggests that “Some o’ these young bucks’ll git into
trouble befo’ the ev’nings over” (p. 53). The planter suggests that he needs at least four
new workers to harvest his crop. The sheriff nods. There will be “trouble” from young,
strong, “biggity” niggers before the night is through and there will be at least four arrests
that could yield chain gang labor or, very attractively, those arrested may opt for the
planter’s kind offer to let them work off their debts on his farm in lieu of his “taking care of
the fines for them.” Of course, the African Americans are aware that his farm is an armed
camp from which there was no escape, but that seems preferable to many than the horrors
of the chain gang. David in particular was aware of the dangers. He had opted for the chain
gang once before rather than risk the planter’s offer.
In the back streets of the town, sin offers itself to the rural folk in the form of
prostitutes, gambling, drinking, and fighting. David ventures into the African American
slum and watches a circle of gamblers shoot dice. Suddenly, explosively, a fight breaks out,
stimulated by a gambling incident. A man is stabbed and everyone runs, but a sheriff’s
deputy grabs David, although he was only watching the gamblers. The phony charges
against him and four others are “gamblin’, fightin’ an’ resistin’ the law.” And the five men
arrested won’t even be heard in court for another four months. As the sheriff breaks this
news to the arrested men Sunday morning, the planter “happens by” and suggests that the
expense, time, and likely chain gang sentencing will cost the men at least a year of their
lives, perhaps more. Of course, if the sheriff would reduce the charges to disturbing the
peace, the justice of the peace could hear their cases right away and probably would fine
them $25 each and costs. The men protest that they don’t have the money. The planter
offers to pay the fines as an advance against wages for picking cotton on his farm. The men
know his reputation and know they are being conned. The sheriff endorses the planter’s
scheme. The planter finally convinces them with these words: “It would be a shame to send
these boys to the chain gang … especially now that the Prison Commission will restore the
leather again” (p. 74). David and the others know this means that it will once again be
permissible to whip convicts repeatedly with a leather strap across their bare buttocks, a
horrific old practice that had been banned. The planter, they know, is a county
commissioner and is in a position to be believed. All falls into place as the conspirators had
planned the evening before and as the justice of the peace plays his proper role. The African
Americans are soon on their way to the planter’s and he makes sure they glimpse the
revolver he packs on his hip in a smooth-worn holster.
Once at the plantation, the men find what resembles a convict camp stockade, minus
the striped uniforms and chains. But the common, cramped living areas, the barbed wire
fences, the armed guards, and the demands for hard labor were the same. They settle in and
soon find out that others who preceded them had been cheated in the commissary with
charges for materials and goods never received and an exorbitant 20% interest rate on the
balance, which always exceeded the wages earned. Moreover, they also were charged for
food, rent, shoes, clothing, and everything possible. “Dat’s how dey git you,” Limpy,
formerly on the chain gang with David, says sourly (p. 91).
The fields were likewise fenced and patrolled by men with shotguns on horseback.
A breakout would locate the virtual slaves in a huge swamp and all agreed that life would
be short there. Given the conditions of African Americans in Georgia and elsewhere in the
South, most workers at the planter’s farm were reasonably content and adequately provided
for, given they did not slack up on their work. A steady yield of 250 lbs. of cotton was
expected from each man each day he was in the fields. Spivak works African American
culture into his narrative at this point through a singer whose repertoire covers the spectrum
from good times to sorrows experienced on that very plantation. His song lyrics aptly
summarize their exploitation.
After some time, David cautiously begins to explore the possibility of running away
when it becomes apparent the planter will never willingly release him or any of the others.
He learns what happened to two men who’d made the attempt earlier. One was dead of a
shotgun blast and buried in the swamp. The other, Sam Lowie, was beaten and leathered.
However, he escaped again after two weeks of healing, reported his friend’s murder to the
sheriff, and soon ended up back with the planter. Whipped again, he healed and was sent to
the fields. But the man strangely disappeared shortly thereafter, with foul play suspected
and whispered about.
Rumors about Sam Lowie’s disappearance were superseded by an event that takes
place when Limpy gets sick (“the mis’ries”) and cannot work because of his fever. The
planter confronts him in the mess hall, challenges him, and demands that he work. Limpy
mouths a belief that the present plight of the African American is worse than that of former
pre-Civil War slaves (Bryant, 1994): “Sho … if I was yo’ slave an’ you paid a t’ousan’
dollars fo’ me you’d tek care o’ me w’en I git de mis’ries but you kin git plenty mo’
niggers cheap if I die – ” (p. 98). And die he does, as the enraged Deering pumps two
revolver bullets into him. The planter leaves the mess hall where the murder took place in
full view of the other workers, with these parting words: “I want no impudence around
here! … Remember that! And I’m not paying you to play sick. I’m paying you to work! …
Weight the son of a bitch and bury him in the swamp!” (p. 99)
David, shaken, concludes that the plantation is worse than the chain gang. He also
believes that Limpy’s dying speech was correct. Privy to David’s thoughts, the reader
learns that “Limpy had cost Deering only five dollars. Five dollars. That was all. And there
were lots of five dollar niggers … Cheap niggers – and the south was full of them,
ploughing the soil, chopping cotton, picking cotton, ginning cotton. And if Limpy were
never seen again, why, he was just a nigger who owed Deering money and ran away, a
runaway nigger afraid to show his face; and if someone told the sheriff – well, look at what
happened to Sam Lowie” (pp. 100-101). The other African Americans have quietly come
to conclusions similar to David’s. “No one spoke of Limpy. It was hard to believe that this
noon he had opened his mouth and this evening he was in a dismal swamp, dead, with
weights around his body” (p. 101). Eventually, however, those still alive begin to whisper
and plot their personal escapes. One escape is accomplished. Then a brutal crackdown is
put into operation. A savage beating is administered to another worker who merely left his
cotton row for a drink of water. Any infractions of the rules or orders not immediately
obeyed are immediately cursed or followed with beatings thereafter. David himself is
threatened with a pick handle for a trivial matter. However, the fear and tension is only
exacerbated with the subsequent escape of four more workers into the swamp where their
fate is so certain that the guards don’t even bother to try to capture them. The planter goes
to town and returns with “a new batch of six.” Limpy’s dying words ring true.
David weighs his options and decides to try an escape, hoping the landowner who
“owns” his family (and David too) will help him if he makes it that far. With the help of a
friend with a wife, they scheme to ask the guard if David and the wife can rendezvous after
dark for a supposed dalliance. The plot succeeds and David quickly covers as much of the
25 miles as possible on his way to his family’s cabin. When he cautiously arrives there, he
quickly learns the sheriff and deputy had been to the cabin searching for him. David learns
that “his master” is unlikely to stand up to Deering on his behalf. He returns to the woods
while the family ponders what he might do, since he cannot stay in the area indefinitely. His
father decides to approach another white elite, a former Southern aristocract who is known
to the family and who has shown some kindnesses to African Americans in the past. The
man, Mr. Ramsey, agrees to help David with money and transport out of the county.
Ramsey begins the trip to take David out of the county. The sheriff stops him and
Ramsey explains that he is on the way to Atlanta to prefer charges against Deering for
murder. The sheriff takes David until bail can be set, but Ramsey stays with the sheriff and
David. Deering and his family’s “owner” (a man named Pearson) are sent for. The sheriff
makes an obvious threat that if the “difficulty” can’t be straightened out, David’s family
will be hurt. The sheriff continues trying to persuade Ramsey:
Even if the charge is preferred an’ a dead nigger’s body is found an’ even if you git
witnesses you’ve got to git a coroner’s jury to decide it was murder an’ not self
defense. An’ then you got to git the grand jury to indict. An’ even if the coroner’s
verdict is murder an’ the grand jury indicts, which is very doubtful, Mr. Deerin’ll
have to be tried in this county. How many whites do you figger’ll find him guilty?
I’m jes’ lookin’ at all this from the stan’point of arrest an’ conviction. There’s no
use goin’ off half-cocked. (p. 135)
Even this impossible scenario doesn’t sway the aristocratic white man. Subsequent
arguments about Deering’s bank that affects the economic health of everyone in town,
including the stubborn white man, and the sheriff’s flat prediction that “it’d be almost
impossible to convict Mr. Deerin, or even indict him” and extended arguments whether “all
this trouble over a nigger” is worth the risks Ramsey is taking have no effect. The white
man has dug in his heels and intends to see that justice is done, taking a chance on a
miracle.
At this point in the story, Spivak provides some historical perspective made salient
by his personal ideology that leans toward communism and his reading of the “excellent
studies published by sociologists and penologists,” whom he respects but whose works are
thought unavailable to the audience he is trying to reach (postscript, following p. 241).
Spivak’s treatise would have been a difficult burden to carry in a narrative through dialogue
or action. However, Spivak inserts this heavy-handed section in order to make David’s
plight and the behavior of his temporary white savior crystal clear. The break in the story is
set against Ramsey’s falling silent and may be seen as his silent musings:
Georgia Crackers were in the saddle, a rising white trash class squeezing wealth
from blacks freed from slavery. Crackers had seized the power to vote so they were
the law, and by legal trickery had maneuvered the niggers into another bondage.
Trash who had lived like slaves were now building mansions on the bent backs of
niggers and those whites with contempt for Cracker thievery had to live there, carry
on their businesses, raise their families. Protests would mean business pressure,
social pressure, community pressure, for most Ochlockonee whites dreamed of
riding to riches on the descendents of slaves. The Cracker was riding high, with the
law in one hand and the whip in the other. The proclamation to free niggers had
really only reduced prices for niggers. White trash who never had a thousand
dollars or fifteen hundred dollars to pay for a slave could get niggers now for a few
dollars a head by giving them an advance against wages.
Times change and new ways of getting slaves are cunningly devised. … Some steal
with a pistol and some with the law. (pp. 138-139)
Spivak, however, also wants a counterargument to appear. The sheriff’s thoughts,
surprisingly cogent and concise, are revealed as the Cracker rationalization for making
peons of African Americans. They also reveal smoldering resentment of the old South’s
aristocracy:
No one could tell what might be stirred up when a respected citizen like Ramsey
wanted to create trouble. These old aristocrats thought they knew how to handle
niggers, thought it wiser for the South to keep them contented. Niggers had gone
north, a million of them, the papers said, and these whites thought the exodus bad.
They wanted to keep them in the South by giving them better treatment and more
rights. But many niggers were better off than whites. Whites had to worry about
planting, advances, picking and selling cotton, rain. Even a bumper crop did not
mean profit. The whole country might have a bumper crop so prices drop, or some
outlandish country where workers live on a nickel a day might have a bumper crop
and sell cotton cheaper than the South could grow it. Niggers do not have to worry
about such things. (p. 140)
Ramsey, alone in his thoughts, is permitted the final internal musing:
Ramsey’s glance traveled to the worried boy. A nigger in the hands of whites, the
black South, needed for the planting and the reaping and these whites were driving
him away. Those two black hands planted the field and garnered the harvest, built
the roads and the mills, raised Georgia from a wilderness. Upon that back the South
had built its civilization. There was strength in that nigger, strength to destroy what
he carried on his back and these money-grubbing, nigger-trapping whites were too
short sighted to see where they were driving him.
“That nigra doesn’t know his own strength,” he thought. (pp. 140 –
141)
Spivak restrains from further ideological explication, although he does not side with
Ramsey, the sheriff, or Deering. But the reader who is aware of history as the communist
explains and predicts it might well be stimulated to conduct his or her own internal dialogue
that calls for mobilization of the proletariat masses in a revolution against the bourgeoisie.
As the action of the story resumes, Deering and Ramsey confront one another, with
the sheriff trying to mediate. Deering owns up to the killing, but claims it was self-defense.
The sheriff, trying to maintain the guise of legal procedure, mildly remonstrates Deering for
not reporting the death. Deering makes his excuses. Ramsey continues to defend David as
Deering demands David’s return. Deering vaguely predicts a lynching in
David’s future (Raper, 1933). Ramsey will not back down and demands that the sheriff
continue to hold David as a material witness to a murder charge, and not to release David to
Deering, who wants his return. Deering, seeing that Ramsey will not be cowed, confers
with the sheriff and then offers to return David to Ramsey “for what he’s cost me.”
Ramsey agrees to pay, but “less what he’s already earned working” (p. 147). The sheriff
breathes a sigh of relief and “cheerfully” closes the confrontation with “I hope everything’s
settled now, gentlemen, an’ that there’s no hard feelin’s” (p. 148). Deering stomps away.
David says he prefers not to make charges of murder against Deering and is released to
Ramsey, who drives him to an adjoining county, gives him $10, and advises him to leave
on the Americus bus to Macon where he has the chance of finding work among the “large
nigra population.” At the bus station, David is approached by a white asking if he wants
work, a scenario with which by now he is only too familiar. Frightened, he leaves the bus
depot for the highway and finds a ride with a sympathetic “grizzled old nigger in an empty
wagon.” The man warns him that the sheriff of that county gets $3 for every “foot-loose
nigger” he can arrest because there is a labor shortage there too. The man advises David to
catch a bus, because a paid ticket will protect him. David rides a bus to the next stop, but is
told the connecting bus doesn’t leave until the next morning. Looking for the “nigger town”
to get a meal and spend the night, he is picked up by the law, interrogated, and because he
is honest and confides he has no relatives or job in Americus, is arrested for vagrancy and
jailed. David refuses another offer by a white farmer to pay his fine. The sheriff says “We
kin use’m. We’re short o’ convicts anyway to finish the road to Jeff Beacon’s place” (p.
155). David is fined $10 and costs or three months in the “Buzzard’s Roost,” Chickasaw
county’s convict camp. He is back on the chain gang.
Bill Twine is the Buzzard Roost warden. His initial talk to David is friendly enough
and Twine did not bother to manacle the prisoner for the ride to the camp. David is dazed.
On the way to the camp, “something snapped in the boy’s brain and without fully realizing
what he did he flung the door of the car open and jumped” (p. 158). From that point, the
warden loses all semblance of friendliness and despite the fact that David is hurt and
bleeding from his fall, strikes him in the face with a big fist. David resists being tied and is
knocked unconscious by a blow to the head from the warden’s pistol. He awakes in the
county jail, is charged with a misdemeanor, and receives nine additional months to be
served on the chain gang after serving his original three months.
At this point in the story, Spivak again interrupts the narrative to explain Georgia
law and the Prison Commission and the Cracker politics that permeated the system that
naturally worked to the benefit of local whites and to the disadvantage of African
Americans.
Returning to his story at Buzzard Roost, Spivak sets the scene with descriptions
that conjure up images of high security precautions, filth and squalor, ugliness, tropical heat
and stagnancy, swarms of droning insects, instruments of torture and death, swamp
voodoo and monsters, and religious superstition and foreboding. The inmates there are
smelly, unwashed, gas-belching, half-crazed creatures – “chained things” – who seem a
much more desperate lot than David’s first chain gang companions. The white guards and
warden seem nearly as demented.
The road work requires teamwork and a steady, rhythmic pace, controlled by the
giant 20-year inmate “Smallpox Carter” who “sets the lick” with ancient songs and tunes
like “the cry of his savage ancestors praying to their gods in a jungle” (pp. 179-180).
Smallpox is a kindly African American and David is puzzled by his behavior until he
figures out that Smallpox wanted his “comfort” and recalls his father’s words that “to sleep
with a man was as evil in the eyes of the Lord as sleeping with a beast of the field” (p.
182). David rebuffs Smallpox’s advances. Other convicts with long histories in various
convict camps throughout the South tell stories of horrific treatment of prisoners elsewhere
that make Buzzard’s Roost seem like an idyllic camp, a kindly rest haven. David’s
prospects do not seem bright. Spivak sharpens this assessment with two horrible anecdotes
about the Buzzard’s Roost medical doctor’s indifference to accident and sickness, his
medical malfeasance and callousness, and the deaths of two inmates, one tortured and the
other consumptive, followed by officials lying when completing state documents that after
all would only be gathering dust on Atlanta shelves after a perfunctory glance.
However, one of the deaths serves as an excuse for David and a fellow convict’s
escape. The consumptive’s grave is located at the edge of the treacherous swamp. Spivak
describes a touching, almost humorous burial scene and shows the African American
convicts as superstitious souls who fervently believe in the hereafter as a release from the
troubles of their world. A convict, Ebenezer, who sat up with the dead body in the
blacksmith’s shelter during the night has stolen a steel file, secrets it by the grave, and tells
David he has a plan for escape, but that two need to go so one can watch while the other
sleeps. He tells David he knows the swamps and that the hounds can’t track them if they
stick to the water. They will visit the grave after dark on a pretext, relying on the warden’s
knowledge of “the nigger custom of mourning the dead and decorating graves with broken
crockery, cans, pots – anything sufficiently useless not to be stolen” and the warden’s
belief that no one would be crazy enough to try to escape through the swamp, especially
with chains and spikes on their legs. David weighs his chances of survival in the camp and
survival in the swamp. “‘W’en you fixin’ to try?’ he asked eagerly” (pp. 220-221). The
plan works and the two men slip into the “voodoo hell” of the swamp and “the darkness of
the unknown” (pp. 224-225). An immediate hunt for the men is launched, but quickly
abandoned. David and his fellow convict use the steel file to remove their spikes and
chains. They flee as quickly and quietly as possible through the primeval slime, finding
their way by moonlight. After sleeping, the swamp by daylight seems lush in its greenery,
with chattering life and chirping birds, excitement, and shimmering sun on the water. There
is a sense of the luxury of space and laziness and freedom. But it’s getting hot and the men
need water, which means a trip to civilization will be necessary. Eventually they find water,
but they also need to find clothing and get rid of their prison garb. His companion fails to
return after reconnoitering for food and clothing. Fearing that he will be captured again,
David strikes out on his own in the swamp, traveling north for days, scavenging food from
gardens and drinking water from mule troughs. He is a mass of sores from insect bites, his
clothing is filthy and torn, he is tired, thirsty and hungry and his despair grows. He awakes
to the baying of hounds and the sight of the warden and trusties. He tries to flee, but the
unleashed hounds and shotgun blasts stop him. He is struck in the mouth by a guard.
Back in Buzzard’s Roost, his fellow escapee is trussed up in a “hog-tie” like a pig
readied for the slaughter. He is unconscious and the ubiquitous red ants swarm over his
face and body. David’s punishment is to be the most feared – the “sweat box:”
The thick door of the pine box was opened and he was thrust in. The padlock
snapped.
It was dark inside except for a small spot of light entering a two by four inch air
hole in the top. The box was too narrow to turn around in and he stood motionless,
a living mummy in an upright coffin. The tropic sun beat upon it. Sweat dribbled
down his face and body. His tongue was dry, thick, swollen. It was hard to breathe.
He heard Bill Twine’s muffled order to pour water over Ebenezer.
He became dizzy. He opened his mouth for air. The dried swamp filth and slime on
his body and clothes dissolved and ran down his chest and legs. The striped suit
clung to him. His wrists expanded from the heat, swelled, and the handcuffs chafed
and irritated them. His head ached. A mosquito entered through the air hole and
fastened on his neck despite his spasmodic jerks to dislodge it. Flies whirred and
droned about his head.
He heard the warden order Ebenezer trussed up again. The nigger pleaded, his
words indistinct.
Sometime in the afternoon he could no longer restrain the demands of his bowels
and bladder and his excretions dribbled down his thighs.
The humid, stifling air in the sweat box filled with a sickening stench. Flies and
mosquitoes, attracted by the odor, swarmed through the air hole.
A merciful blanket of unconsciousness covered him.
He was awakened once by Ebenezer’s sobs:
“Oh, please, please, suh. I cain’ stan’ hit no mo’.” …
The sweat box was opened in the morning. The boy fell out, unconscious, bloated,
swollen (pp. 238-239).
The last scene depicts David in the cage during the aftermath of his day and night in
the sweat box. Ebenezer is nearby, also recuperating from torture, and tells David he’d been
caught and while being tortured by the stretching technique, had finally confessed to them
where he’d left David. David doesn’t answer Ebenezer, but turns away from him toward
the bars of the cage. Later, he gets another suit of stripes, another set of spikes, and a new
iron collar, snapped around his neck with a padlock. He is attached to a five-foot chain
anchored to the cage. It gives him just enough room to reach the pan used for bodily
wastes. Spivak’s final paragraph reads:
From his bunk he could see the tiny red ants scurrying in all directions and the
shadow of the cross dark on the red soil (p. 241).
Symbols and Solutions
Thus, the story ends on a pessimistic note with a fatalist theme. David Jackson, the
nice young African American who wanted to be a “good nigger,” was bent by a system
beyond his control that created a “bad nigger” of him, destroying his life through evil made
all the worse because it was banal and beyond his ken. But Spivak cannot have intended
the reader to accept the ending. He must have wanted the reader/viewer to protest, to
become enraged, to want to take some action to correct the unfairness and injustice of
David Jackson’s life and the lives of hundreds and thousands like him.
The cross is a symbol throughout the novel. The book begins with a reference to
two lanterns hanging from a wooden cross that is driven deep in the red soil of the convict
camp stockade. The horrors of nighttime in the camp invariably make reference to this cross
with its yellowish lantern lights in the distance as insects bite, wild animals howl, the
common toilet beneath their cage stinks, and convicts stacked in tiers and rows on either
side of the cage fart, snore, have nightmares, and babble and cry and moan. The cross
stands for the religion and god that promises what most of the African Americans depicted
in Georgia Nigger see as their only hope for a decent and peaceful life in the hereafter.
None appear to have much hope while suffering intense pain in the present, although the
dream of a job and freedom in the North is dwelled upon from time to time. However, the
light cast from the cross in the book is always feeble and illuminates only enough to create
spooky shadows and bizarre shapes. Spivak implies that the cross, and hence religion, will
not be enough to save them. From the muckraking era to the time Spivak wrote his book,
the religious press had led in reporting racial injustice (Bannister, 1973; Dittmer, 1977;
Grant, 1993). Perhaps Spivak was aware of this and was impatient with the lack of
progress in addressing those issues from a religious perspective.
Similarly, Spivak’s narrative often comments on Georgia’s red soil. His most
poignant reference is communicated in the words of a grizzled veteran of convict camps,
Skillet Jones:
Skillet looked as though southern suns had dried him until there was nothing left
but a parched brown skin stretched tightly over small bones, and two close set eyes
darting furtively in cadaverous sockets. A long scar ran from his forehead to his
nose, hit with a skillet by a wench, he explained with a wide grin.
There was the day David sat near him during the dinner period. Water had spilled
from a pail and the wet clay was a deeper, darker red.
“Nigger blood,” Skillet said viciously. “All dese roads is red. All through de souf.
So much nigger blood in ‘em dat no rain kin ever wash ‘em clean again” (p. 185).
Red ants, presumably the biting ants also known as “fire ants,” are often described
crawling on the ground and on the convicts. A small insect’s bite is negligible; it is a spark
landed on the skin from a campfire suddenly blown by the wind. Receiving hundreds of
small bites simultaneously and continuously is a crackling forest fire that has one
surrounded; it is a torture that is more terrible than one swift blow that has an initial pain
but an eventual end to hurt. The convicts can never escape the ants, just as they cannot
escape the Crackers’ scheming, punishments, and exploitation. That Spivak chooses to end
his narrative with a description of David looking at all three symbols – the cross, the red
soil, and the myriad of red ants scurrying every which way while he is trapped in one spot
– is a pessimistic scene that is unsettling and unfinished. It leaves the involved and
empathic reader believing “Something must be done!” Spivak leads the reader right up to a
conclusion that demands action; he implicitly recommends that the groups could increase
their collective strength, if they would but put aside their differences, band together, and
dedicate themselves to actions that will overthrow the existing, corrupt regime. The
implication is that they would inevitably succeed. They don’t know their own strength
because they don’t know their group’s past and they haven’t thought deeply about ways to
achieve a more promising future.
And Then What Happened?
The book’s actual effects on American society was not perhaps what Spivak
intended – there was a cycle that began with the exposé, there was public pressure for
reform of the object of the exposé, there was national political pressure brought to bear on
policymakers, there were well-publicized hearings and promises to “clean up the mess.”
There were new policies formulated and put into action, there was initial monitoring to see
that the new policies were followed, and there was the slipping back into the old routine
and status quo that came after the public spotlight had moved to other topics and issues.
This pattern has been observed many times in other eras and contexts (Morris, 1995;
Rothman, 1995; Rotman, 1995; Tannenbaum, 1924). No doubt there were improvements to
the penal systems in the South; however, Spivak’s dream of a mass movement, a revolution
of some intensity and action to create a new order that fostered new values, such as love,
brotherhood, freedom, quality, opportunity, and justice, did not occur and modern
journalism continues to investigate and report on racist corruption and crime as it
undermines these values as they affect African Americans (Serrin & Serrin, 2002). Yet,
Spivak had made a start and when one reads Georgia Nigger and examines its photographs
of convict camps and state documents nearly three-quarters of a century later, one is struck
by the realization that great advances in civil rights and human relations have been achieved
beyond the narrow spectrum of chain gang and peonage practices (Holmes, 1991).
Spivak placed race, class, economics, and power at the front of the reasons why
humans torment and torture one another. These factors of broad sociological import still
impact the psychology of day-to-day behaviors and beliefs. We may never know why
Spivak decided to write this odd amalgam based on his muckraking impulses, risky
detective reporting and photography, and literary fiction that sometimes reads like the pulp
fiction articles that he produced for detective and mystery magazines by the score. But
unlike other forms of writing that he might have selected, his effort still speaks to a
contemporary audience.
At the time Spivak wrote Georgia Nigger, there were more than 8,000 chain gang
convicts working on roads, ditches, and other projects throughout the state, of which threequarters were African Americans (Lichtenstein, 1995, 1996, 2005). For most people of the
times, contact with chain gangs probably was limited to a brief glimpse of men in striped
clothing working with shovels and other tools. The brutality those men faced through
torture was not public knowledge. As many in the South as in the North probably were
shocked and dismayed to learn of such practices. Certainly, the book made a sizeable splash
when it was released. The New York Times said it had “the weight and authority of a
sociological investigation” and Walter White, Executive Secretary of the National
Association for the Advancement of Colored People, called it “the most devastating exposé
of the treatment of Negroes in the Georgia chain gang that has ever been
written” (Lichtenstein, 2005).
However, Robert Elliot Burns’ I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang
eclipsed Georgia Nigger in impact, especially since it was the basis for a Hollywood movie
starring major actors (Burns, 1932; Minchew, 1992; O’Connor, 1981). Burns published
his book using the first person voice in the same year that Spivak’s book came out, in
1932. After his first escape, Burns established himself in a successful career under a
pseudonym, but his jealous wife betrayed his secret. Georgia officials used duplicity to
again place Burns on the chain gang and he again escaped. As a white Northerner on the
run after two dramatic escapes, Burns’ account of his chain gang experiences was written
from a quite different perspective and point of view with which many white Americans
perhaps were better able to identify. (Critics of Spivak’s book have questioned whether a
white man was able to speak for African Americans and wondered about his motives
[Perreault, 2001]. Perhaps some of Spivak’s contemporary readers had the same questions
and suspicions.) When Burns’ book came out, Georgian officials again pressed to return
Burns to Georgia and attended a public extradition hearing in New Jersey for that purpose.
However, the hearing was a sham choreographed to popularize New Jersey’s Governor,
who had no intention of extraditing Burns, given public sentiment in his favor (Blackwell,
2004). The story made national headlines. Spivak was asked to testify on Burns’ behalf at
the hearing and managed to become a media sensation as the circus unfolded. Georgia
officials claimed Spivak’s photographs of the convicts were either posed as the result of
payments to convicts or outright fakes. Spivak produced his photographic negatives; some
showed convict camp wardens supervising torture. The negatives were solemnly held to the
lights and viewed by the New Jersey Governor and other state officials, who pronounced
them authentic and genuine (Burns’ Extradition, 1932). The view that photographs may
not offer a factual representation of the world, (a belief increasingly advocated; see
Schwartz, 1999) was not considered at the hearing.
Any effects of Spivak’s book are commingled with the impact of Burns’ book and
the Hollywood movie. It is impossible to sort out the relative and unique contributions of
each to positive social changes that resulted. Anthropologist Luther P. Gerlach, who
studied the neo-Pentecostal Church of African Americans, the Black Power Movement,
and the social movements of other interest groups during the 1960s, pointed out that
different interests and different approaches to trying to solve the same core problems often
have mutually stimulating and beneficial effects, although the groups and individuals
themselves may view one another as rivals and compete in conflict. Rather than seeing their
efforts as “hopelessly fragmented,” Gerlach theorized about the positive impact of a
“dynamic, synergistic interrelationship of diverse groups in a total and very effective
movement network” (Gerlach, 1970, p. 134). Applied to Spivak, Burns, Hollywood, and
other principals (e.g., Heredon, 1937), we can see that while each constituency had its own
goals and agenda, as well as approach to communicating their topic, their interactions and
coming together to achieve common communication goals (e.g., sell a product to a mass
audience; affect public opinion and effect social change through policy and practice reform),
worked positively to achieve social change in the manner Gerlach described. Spivak’s
unique decision to write fiction based on his detective style of reporting, supplemented with
photographs, contributed to “imbuing the obscure with the aura of spectacle” (Hardt &
Brennan, 1999, p. 18) and to placing the topic of penal injustice, and more broadly, to
fostering the civil rights movement, on American national front pages and nightstand
reading tables. Nor did it end at the country’s borders. Spivak’s Georgia Nigger was
published in England and was translated into French, Russian, and German, elevating
Spivak’s stature to that of a darling of international left-wing circles and his message to a
global level of conversation and concern (Lichtenstein, 2005).
A hooded prisoner stands on a box with wires attached to his hands. The prisoner
was allegedly told that if he fell off the box, he would be electrocuted, although the wires
were not really connected to a power supply. (Photo: CBS/60 Minutes II)
From Chickasaw County to Abu Ghraib and Beyond
We find that Spivak’s analysis occasionally is eerily relevant to the contemporary
world, particularly to issues raised by the Iraq Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba
prison abuses by military guards (Andén-Papadopoulos, 2005; Feldman, 2005; Griffin,
2005; Grundberg, 2005). Even the methods of torture are similar. Whereas David Jackson
suffered, claustrophobic in a sweat box, the tortured Iraqis suffered sensory deprivation.
The man in the iconic Abu Ghraib image was forced to stand motionless for long periods
of time, wearing a hood, balancing on a small box, fearing for his life, since he had been
told he’d electrocute himself if he moved. When one learns, not only of the abuses of Abu
Ghraib, Gitmo Bay, and the hush-hush secret CIA camps for interrogation (Meeropol,
2005), but also of the accusations against “rogue” U. S. Marines who allegedly went on a
systematic house-to-house hunt killing rampage against up to two dozen civilians Iraqis
(many or most presumably innocent) in Haditha to seek revenge after one Marine was
killed by a bomb (Hendawi, 2006), one also reflects upon the evil side of human nature that
transcends time and expresses itself in different motives and techniques, but fundamentally
is motivated by the same impulses. Similarly, the good side of human nature is evident and
vigilant and tries to avoid complacency. There will always be those who rationalize the
status quo, who defend wrong, and who selfishly look out for unfair, illegal, and corrupt
benefits and rewards to satisfy their own greedy and ignoble impulses. Knowing this, and
hoping for progress toward the values Spivak advocated, humans can strive for progress
without accepting the means Spivak advocated toward those ends.
We have tried to provide a critical appraisal of Spivak’s role in the pivotal and
nascent phases of the civil rights movement and to make a case that Spivak, warts and all,
should not be forgotten by contemporary journalism and communication scholars (Katz &
Szecskö, 1981), whatever the reasons that have made it easy to dismiss and reject his
contributions to American journalistic, literary, photographic, and public opinion/
policymaking history.
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Slides - Appendix A
(All slides from Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas-Austin, unless noted; Captions from Georgia Nigger, 1932)
The “Circus Wagon”
1. Circus wagon (unaltered) [P-04B]. “THE CAGE where convicts are herded like beasts
of the jungle. The pan under it is the toilet receptacle. The stench from it hangs like a pall
over the whole area. Flies and mosquitoes feed on the pan’s contents and then enter the
cage through the holes in the screen” (book appendix).
2. Circus wagon (altered for publication, not in book) [P-04A]. “TWO lanterns hung from
the wooden cross driven deep in the red soil of the convict camp stockade. They threw a
pale, yellow light over the ground and the steel cage on wheels so like a huge circus wagon
in which ferocious beasts of the jungle are penned. The guard, staring absently at the sky,
sat in an old chair tilted against the mess hall shack” (book, p. 1).
3. Glimpse of convict inside circus wagon (unaltered, not in book) [P-05]. “There were
thirteen men in the cage with David – nine Negroes and five whites – sprawled on thin
mattresses covering the iron bunks ranging the length of the cage on either side in three
three-decker tiers. The six nearest the solid steel door were reserved for whites. The
fourteen men were naked to the waist. Their exposed bodies shone with sweat even in the
semi-darkness” (book, pp. 1-2).
4. Sick men on bunks of circus wagon (unaltered) [P-09B]. “SICK CONVICTS IN
CAGE. Stripped to the waist because of the intense heat” (caption for similar photograph,
book appendix).
5. Spivak’s handwritten comment on back of photograph of sick men similar to P-09B,
above (unaltered, not in book) [P-09A]. “Two sick convicts, stripped to the waist because
of the intense heat, lying in cage at Camp No. 4, Sumter County chain gang – C. H.
Wheatley, warden – a few miles out of Americus, Ga. October 24, 1931.”
Inside Permanent Stockade
6. Convict in chains (neck, legs) (unaltered) [P-12A]. “A HALTER FOR THE NECK. The
iron collar is locked to the bars of the cage” (book appendix).
7. Spivak’s comments on back of photograph (unaltered, not in book) [P-12A-Back].
“Chained by neck and feet to iron cage. Muscogee County, Ga., near Columbus, Ga. This
convict had had the iron collar around his neck for 2 months, and was forced to lie in his
bunk all the time except during working hours, where he was chained doubly and ‘left
under the gun.’”
8. Thirteen Georgia niggers (altered, not in book) [P-13]. “A heavy, summer stillness hung
over the camp. A trusty came out with two suits of stripes. ‘Git in ‘em,’ the deputy ordered.
The change made David resentful. Ebenezer was sobered by the wrinkled convict suit that
marked him so irrevocably as of the chain gang until his dying day” (pp. 166-167).
9. Semi-monthly bath (unaltered, not in book) [P-11A].
10. Spivak’s comments on back of photograph (unaltered, not in book) [P-11A-Back].
“Negro convict taking the semi-monthly bath. White and colored prisoners use same tub
and water, including those with contagious diseases. Seminole County (Ga.) convict camp
stockade.”
11. Drying off as bath concludes (altered, not in book) [P-11B]. “… some bathed in a large
pan, less for cleanliness than for the cool feel of water and when they washed five or six
used the same pan, for the pump was in the warden’s yard and it was too much trouble to
carry water for each man. … David watched a strapping nigger with an open sore the size
of a dime on his left leg bathe in water already used. ‘Syph’lis,’ the bather volunteered
indifferently, noting the boy’s look. ‘Ah tol’ de Cap’n ‘bout hit w’en I fus’ come an’ Dr.
Blaine, he come an’ look me ovah an’ said hit was syph’lis but he couldn’t afford to buy
me injections an’ de Cap’n said he couldn’t affohd to sen’ a strong niggah away w’en he
was shy o’ convicts. But hit doan hu’t. Ain’ no bother a-tall. Hit’ll go away in a li’l
while” (p. 184).
12. Spivak comment, Daily Worker printing instructions, back of photograph (unaltered,
not in book) [P-11B-Back]. “Negro convict taking bath in tub. Same water used by whites
and blacks, the healthy and the sick. Seminole County (Ga.) convict camp stockade.” Crop
←
‌ ─ 2” ─ ) 55 screen 7/1000 deep [illegible] today 6 p.m. Daily Worker (editorial)
Chain Gang at Work
13. Seven men in shovel brigade, trusty (unaltered, not in book) [P-16E]. “‘One star in de
east, One star in de west, An’ between de two dey ain’ neber no rest.’ Convicts working in
unison by singing. Rhythmic movement is necessary to avoid injuring one another while
bending or rising” (caption for similar photograph, book appendix).
14. Eight men in shovel brigade (altered, not in book) [P-18J]. “When the sweat rolls
down your body and the clothes cling to it as though water had been poured over you, and
the dust of a Georgia road gets in your nose and eyes and ears and covers you with a
reddish film while you shovel fourteen times to the minute, minute after minute, hour after
hour, -- it’s then that you go mad” (p. 172). “Let us cross over de river, Let us cross over
de river, Let us cross over de river, An’ rest. O Lawd! Ain’ dey no rest fo’ de weary
one?” (p. 203).
15. Three men in irons, leg spikes (unaltered) [P-16A]. “SPIKES. These 20 lb. weights
permanently riveted around the legs are a drawn-out torture leading to exhaustion. During
the day they rub against the legs, creating sores which often become infected. Such
infections are known as “shackle poison.” At night the convict’s rest is repeatedly broken
by the need of raising his legs whenever he turns in his bunk” (book appendix).
16. Four men shoveling, leg spikes (unaltered, not in book) [P-18F]. “Twenty pounds of
steel bayonets riveted around the ankles. Ten inches of steel in front and ten inches behind
so the convict can hardly walk without tripping, or sleep without waking when he turns. …
The eye between the two steel prongs fitted closely around the ankle, with just enough
space for pants to be pulled through when changing clothes. The weight on his feet was
heavy when he rose. With his first step the projections clashed noisily against each other.
‘Spread yo’ laigs,’ the blacksmith cautioned. David gained the steps of the nigger cage
walking straddle-legged. Spikes was the warden’s answer to his mad effort to run away,
steel to remind him at each step that he was marked for special attention, sharp points of
steel, bayonets of steel before him and bayonets of steel after him – because Chickasaw
county wanted to finish a road for a white planter” (pp. 168-169).
17. Three men from same image (altered, not in book) [P-18I]. “His ankles hurt from the
rubbing weight and he feared the irritation would bring shackle poison. Sam Gates had had
shackle poison and he remembered how swollen the leg was. Sometimes, a convict’s leg
has to be cut off if the swelling gets too bad” (p. 201).
Returning to Stockade
18. Ten convicts march in five rows of two each, white guard with rifle and dog in rear
(unaltered, not in book) [P-20A]. “You forget to keep your eyes on the ground when the
guard curses you and say, ‘Yes, sir,’ and in your madness you talk back or show the hate
in your eyes. Then it means punishment when you return to camp” (pp. 172-173).
Convict Camp Discipline – The Stocks
19. Convict in the sun (unaltered, not in book) [P-24C]. “He walked between the warden
and the guard to the stocks and sat on a flat board lying across the low supports. Bill Twine
pulled an iron level and the boards opened, leaving curved spaces for the hands and feet.
‘Put ‘em in!’ The convict raised both feet at right angles from his body and placed his
ankles in the hollows. His chains rattled against the wood. The warden threw the lever that
locked hollows in the upper board over those in which the ankles rested. Wrists followed in
the other grooves and the topmost board clamped over them. With a quick jerk the guard
pulled the board from under the imprisoned convict. The body sagged to within three
inches of the ground. His weight seemed to tear his shoulders from their sockets. The
boards pressed tightly against the arteries of his wrists. The convict uttered a low, ‘Oh,
Jesus!’ They … walked away” (p. 173).
20. Side view of convict “deep seated” in stocks (unaltered, not in book) [P-25B].
“STOCKS. The convict hangs by wrists and ankles two inches from the ground. He is left
thus under the tropic sun. The position is an excruciating torture which quickly produces
unconsciousness” (caption for similar photograph, book appendix).
21. Side view of same image (altered, not in book) [P-25C].
Discipline – “Restricted Movement”
22. “THE GEORGIA RACK. Known as ‘stretching’ and ‘restricted movement.’ The
convict is laced to a post and the rope tied to the handcuffs is pulled around the second post
until the arms are almost torn from their sockets. The ‘stretched’ convict is then left under
the broiling sun. They frequently lose consciousness with an hour” (caption for photograph
similar to those below, book appendix).
23. Convict’s lower torso bound to post, rope being tied to handcuffed arms (unaltered, not
in book) [P-28B]. “The unresisting nigger, with his back to the post, was laced to it from
ankles to hips with a rope and the one tied to the cuffs slipped about the second post” (pp.
208-209).
24. Beginning the arm stretch to a far post (unaltered, not in book) [P-29A]. “The guard
pulled sharply. The convict’s torso jerked forward, bending at right angles, his arms
outstretched. His head dropped between the arms. The sweat on his back and arms
glistened in the light” (p. 209).
25. The full upper torso stretched forward, rope taut (unaltered, not in book) [P-29E].
“‘Stretch!’ the warden ordered harshly. The guard pulled until the rope was as taut as a
tuned violin string. ‘Oh Jesus!’ The nigger screamed. ‘Yo’ pullin’ my arms out!’ The rope
was wound around the post and tied, leaving the convict stretched so the slightest
movement threatened to wrench his shoulders from their sockets. ‘One hour!’ the warden
said curtly …” (p. 209).
Bloodhounds
26. Nine hounds being prepared to sniff and track (unaltered, not in book) [P-31C].
“TEARING AT THE LEASH. A white and a black trusty chaining camp bloodhounds to
trail two escaped convicts” (caption for similar photograph, book appendix).
27. Nine hounds being prepared to sniff and track (unaltered, not in book) [P-31C].
“TEARING AT THE LEASH. A white and a black trusty chaining camp bloodhounds to
trail two escaped convicts” (caption for similar photograph, book appendix).
Discipline – Trussed for the Red Ants
28. Convict trussed on ground, pick axe pointed to his head (unaltered, not in book)
[P-30C]. “Ebenezer was in the stockade. David saw him lying near the stocks in the blaze
of sun, trussed up like a pig ready for slaughter. His head lay loosely on the red soil as
though the neck had been broken. His eyes were closed. His legs and arms, tied with ropes,
pointed to the sky, the whole body kept motionless by a pick thrust between the tied limbs.
His mouth was open. The veins in his temples and arms stood out, swollen. And swarming
over the face and arms and neck were myriads of tiny red ants. Bill Twine paused at
Ebenezer’s form and rolled him over with a foot. ‘Let’m rest fo’ an hour,’ he instructed the
guard, ‘an’ restrict’m again. We’ll see how he likes being free!’ While the guard removed
the pick from between bent legs and arms the warden marched David to the sweat box.
‘You got a lot o’ dirt on you,’ he growled. ‘Nothin’ like a good sweat to git it off you’” (p.
237).
29. Iconic image used facing title page (unaltered, different convict from P-30C)
[TrussedPrisoner-Sm]. “GEORGIA NIGGER.” [Syracuse University Special
Collections Research Center].
30. John L. Spivak portrait in early 1930s (unaltered, not in book) [Portrait2]. [Syracuse
University Special Collections Research Center].
31. Finis
. Spivak was said “not sympathetic to the white ruling class term, ‘nigger,’ but used it in order to bring
forth the degrading system which operates against the Negroes. – Editor.” (“Georgia Nigger shows,” 1932).
The term was in widespread use; for example, Rawlings’ Pulitzer Prize novel, The Yearling, used the
phrase in 1939 (“Pulitzer Prize novel,” 1939; Rawlings, 1938).
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