... and the chain gang of the Virginia State Penitentiary as well as his escapes from those institutions. A section of the chapter charts the manhunts which searched for Wood and his accomplices during these escapes. Wood’s first public pleas for clemency, in the form of letters to North Carolina newspapers...

... laboring bodies were tossed to and fro. Some had landed on the northwest side of the “Empire State of the South” in the Dade coal mines, while others had been set adrift in “flying” railroad camps and mobile chain gangs. Though limited in volume, black women prisoners were a fundamental asset...