Hell put to shame The 1921 Murder Farm massacre and the horror of America's second slavery

The 1921 spree killing of 11 Black men in rural Jasper County, Geo., and the subsequent trial of the white man responsible uncovered the ugly underbelly of peonage, "a form of slavery that had survived in the South for generations after Appomattox," according to this propulsive history from bestseller Swift (Chesapeake Requiem). In a system created by plantation owners in coordination with local police, a young Black man would be arrested for a trumped-up offense, jailed, and charged with exorbitant fines, which a white farmer would offer to pay in return for the prisoner's labor. However, as Swift explains, once on the farm, the prisoner would be forbidden to leave, "trapped in what amounted to debt slavery." Federal agents at the Bureau of Investigation, tipped off by an escapee, went to Georgia to interview plantation owners about the illegal practice, including John S. Williams, who proceeded to kill 11 of his farmhands in a two-week span to cover up earlier murders and peonage on his plantation. As a result of the eyewitness testimony of Clyde Manning, another captive who served as Williams's de facto overseer, an all-white jury convicted Williams, and he was sentenced to life in prison. The ease of reading Swift's efficient prose belies its elegance: "Soon the houses fell away, and the cotton rose, and they were in the country." This is a must-read. (Apr.)

Historical true-crime tale that demonstrates the all-too-real horrors of the peonage system in the American South. In his latest book, Swift, author of Chesapeake Requiem, Across the Airless Wilds, and Auto Biography, unfurls the heinous acts that took place in 1921 at a Georgia farm known as The Murder Farm, where 11 Black men were found shot, bludgeoned, or drowned at or near the farm. Held by a form of debt slavery known as peonage, these men and others were maliciously killed by the farm's owner, John Sims Williams, in order to keep secret the unspeakable acts that took place there. As the FBI began searching Williams' land for evidence of malfeasance, bodies were found in the nearby river tied at the neck to bags of rocks. So began the investigation and trial that brought the dark, then-commonplace racist practices of Georgia's white citizens into the spotlight of the nation. Swift provides word-for-word accounts from Clyde Manning, the farm boss whom Williams threatened to kill should he not commit the murders, as well as trial transcripts and newspaper reports that clearly show the deeply entrenched racist system that dominated the South in the early 20th century. The author fully exposes the hellscape that enabled peonage to thrive, with hundreds of lynchings and mass murders of Black people by white mobs. "It seems too tranquil a setting for the lessons it offers," writes Swift about the river where the bodies turned up. "That the past lurks close. That we haven't learned as much as we think we have. That maybe we never do." This unflinching narrative will make readers examine not only America's dark history, but also the disheartening parallels that exist today. A gripping, memorable work that wholly confronts a hellish past that continues to bleed into the present. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.