Worried Man Blues

[Tanuki]

[Ms. Toad]

1. I'm not sure I've heard that since I sang it in the 70s -

as part of a college folk-singing group!

[Zambero]

2. A commentary on how prisons-for-profit were populated

Vagrancy laws populated many prisons in the south and elsewhere, providing a source of cheap labor and local revenues.

[Tanuki]

3. Douglas Blackmon's excellent, Pulitzer Prize -winning book

discusses that topic at length.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_by_Another_Name

"Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II is a book by American writer Douglas A. Blackmon, published by Anchor Books in 2008.[2] It explores the forced labor of prisoners, overwhelmingly African American men, through the convict lease system used by states, local governments, white farmers, and corporations after the American Civil War until World War II in the southern United States. Blackmon argues that slavery in the United States did not end with the Civil War, but instead persisted well into the 20th century. It depicts the subjugation of Convict Leasing, Sharecropping and Peonage and tells the fate of the former but not of the latter two."....(more)