An’ the Ace o’ Clubs.
O Lawd,
Stopped here to play
Jes’ one mo’ game.
Lawd, Jack o’ Diamonds
Petered on my han’.
[35] For music see [Chapter XIV].
CHAPTER V
SONGS OF JAIL, CHAIN GANG, AND POLICEMEN
Not all Negro “bad men” achieve an abiding place in jail or chain gang. Not all Negroes in jail or chain gang are “bad men”—not by long odds. And yet the prison population of the South contains abundant representations of both major and minor Negro offenders, although the indications are that the ratio of Negroes to whites is decreasing rapidly. And if one wishes to obtain anything like an adequate or accurate picture of the workaday Negro he will surely find much of his best setting in the chain gang, prison, or in the situations of the ever-fleeing fugitive from “chain-gang houn’,” high sheriff or policeman. “I ain’t free, Lawd, I ain’t free,” sings the prisoner who bemoans the bad luck in which he had “nobody to pay my fine.” Never did the old spiritual, as in “Go down, Moses, tell ol’ Pharaoh, let my people go,” express more determined call for freedom than the Negro singer behind the bars. Yet the Negro prisoner combines admirable humor with his wailing song:
I Ain’t Free