Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1927.
Price: $350.00
Hardcover. First edition. Small octavo. [Viii], 194pp. Frontispiece and four plates. Publisher’s cloth. Fine in near fine dustwrapper. The North Carolina Chain Gang describes, in part, the life of chain gangs on the road, portable prison camps, and methods of organization and discipline. Chapter IX —“Case Histories of Typical Negro Convicts”— is specifically devoted to narrating the crimes committed by African-Americans and gives a sociological profile of individual criminals; their family history, physical and mental status, and a synopsis to describe how they came to the North Carolina chain gangs.
This copy presented in 1957 from Nell Blount Davis to Joseph Blount Cheshire III. Nell Blount Davis (1893–1956) was a North Carolina journalist, suffragist, feminist, women’s rights activist, and lawyer. *NCPedia* notes Davis’s specific interest in penology, observing: “[S]he continued to publish much locally on the conditions of women in prisons and highly promoted and publicized a prison investigation in 1954.” This would explain Davis’s interest in this volume on penology and chain gangs in North Carolina. Cheshire, the recipient of the book, came from a family of Raleigh lawyers and may, himself, have been a member of the bar. Scarce in dust jacket and with an interesting association.
Item #426357
