convict lease

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• SOURCE: The Bitter Southerner
  8/4/2020
  

  Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Coverup of Racism, Violence & Greed

  by Kevin Kehrberg & Jeffrey A. Keith

  The song "Swannanoa Tunnel" has been changed through generations of recordings by white musicians, concealing its origins as a song sung by Black convict-lease laborers who were forced to work in deadly conditions, often as punishment for minor crimes (or no crimes at all).