The Oconee County Cage is a former jail on wheels that is located at Browns Square Drive outside of the Oconee Heritage Center in
Walhalla, South Carolina
Walhalla is a city in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Oconee County, South Carolina, United States. Designated in 1868 as the county seat, it lies within the area of the Blue Ridge Escarpment, an area of transition between mountains a ...
, USA in
Oconee County. At the time of its listing, it was located on Church Street at the Oconee County Law Enforcement Center.
It was named to the
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...
on November 14, 1982 along with the
Oconee County Jail.
At the time of its listing, the cage was considered the most intact cage in South Carolina. Oconee County has preserved the cage as a reminder of the former harsh conditions faced by convicts in the early twentieth century.
[
]
Early 20th-century county penal system
In the early twentieth century, county jails in South Carolina were primarily for holding individuals who were awaiting trial that could not afford bail
Bail is a set of pre-trial restrictions that are imposed on a suspect to ensure that they will not hamper the judicial process. Court bail may be offered to secure the conditional release of a defendant with the promise to appear in court when ...
.[ Male convicted prisoners were either sentenced to hard labor on the county ]chain gang
A chain gang or road gang is a group of prisoners chained together to perform menial or physically challenging work as a form of punishment. Such punishment might include repairing buildings, building roads, or clearing land. The system was nota ...
or sent to the state penitentiary
A prison, also known as a jail, gaol, penitentiary, detention center, correction center, correctional facility, or remand center, is a facility where people are Imprisonment, imprisoned under the authority of the State (polity), state, usually ...
.racial segregation
Racial segregation is the separation of people into race (human classification), racial or other Ethnicity, ethnic groups in daily life. Segregation can involve the spatial separation of the races, and mandatory use of different institutions, ...
, white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
prisoners were separated from African-American
African Americans, also known as Black Americans and formerly also called Afro-Americans, are an American racial and ethnic group that consists of Americans who have total or partial ancestry from any of the Black racial groups of Africa. ...
prisoners.[
Instead of being housed in the county jail, chain gangs were housed in cages, cars, or tents near the work site. The cages and cars could be used to also transport the convicts.][
]
History
This jail on wheels was one of several used in the early twentieth century for the housing and transport of prisoners on the chain gang. It was built around 1900.[
In 1915, the State Board of Charities and Corrections reported that the chain gang was about from ]Seneca
Seneca may refer to:
People, fictional characters and language
* Seneca (name), a list of people and fictional characters with the given name or surname
:
:* Seneca the Elder (c. 54 BC – c. AD 39), a Roman rhetorician, writer and father ...
where the convicts were repairing the Oconee Station Road. There were two cages. One held eight African-American men and the other held four white men. For breakfast, they ate bacon, biscuits, syrup, and coffee. For dinner, they ate cabbage, bacon, and cornbread. For supper, they had bacon, biscuits, and syrup. In 1917, they reported that the cages were screened. In 1918, they said that the chain gang only had African Americans. White convicts were held at the jail or sent to the state penitentiary.[
The chain gang convicts typically had a sentence of two months or less. Their families could visit on weekends and bring food. One former convict recalled that the convicts, guards, and their families all ate together and talked.][
There is a similar jail on wheels in the neighboring Pickens County.]
Architecture
It is a metal cage on a chassis with wheels. Draft animals were hitched to a metal tongue attached to the front axle. The cage is approximately long, , and high. The front, top, and floor are solid sheet metal. The sides of the cage are metal bars with riveted strips to form a grid. The rear is sheet metal with a hinged metal door.[
The cage had four metal ]bunk beds
A bunk bed or set of bunks
is a type of bed in which one bed frame (a bunk) is stacked on top of another bed, allowing two or more sleeping-places to occupy the floor space usually required by just one. Bunks are commonly seen on ships, in ...
with three beds each along the sides. The bunks had metal strips to support the bedding. There was a metal barrel in the center for a fire.[ Canvas was used to cover the sides in cold weather.][
Additional pictures of the cage are available.]
See also
Oconee Heritage Center
References
{{National Register of Historic Places in South Carolina
Jails on the National Register of Historic Places in South Carolina
National Register of Historic Places in Oconee County, South Carolina