{"id":2113,"date":"2005-06-05T12:54:03","date_gmt":"2005-06-05T16:54:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=2113"},"modified":"2020-05-12T16:48:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-12T20:48:20","slug":"thousandchains","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2005\/06\/05\/thousandchains\/","title":{"rendered":"The Man Who Broke a Thousand Chains died 50 years ago today"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert Elliot Burns, known as &#8220;The Man Who Broke a Thousand Chains&#8221;, for his role in ending the brutal chain gang system in the South. A World War I veteran, Burns twice escaped from a Georgia chain gang in the 1920s and brought national and international attention to the brutality of the chain gang system. His life, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0820319430\/prisonsuckscom\/\">his book<\/a> and a 1932 Paul Muni <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/B0007TKNJ2\">I Am A Fugitive from a Chain Gang<\/a> film on his life were the inspiration for the initial abolition of the chain gang system.<\/p>\n<p>After the film&#8217;s release, he was arrested again after speaking out a a screening, but three successive New Jersey Governors refused to extradite him back to Georgia. He died of cancer on June 5, 2005 and is buried in a veteran&#8217;s cemetery in New Jersey.<\/p>\n<p>The film, re-released on DVD on May 12, has renewed interest in his case, and, one would hope, the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2003\/US\/Southwest\/10\/29\/chain.gang.reut\/\">stupidity of bringing back chain gangs in symbolic form<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/beverlynational06052005.jpg\" alt=\"burns gravesite\" width=\"540\" height=\"413\" \/><br \/>\nRobert E. Burn&#8217;s gravesite (with red flower, in center) at the Beverly National Cemetery. See <a href=\"\/images\/burns06052005.jpg\">larger version<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is the 50th anniversary of the death of Robert Elliot Burns, known as &#8220;The Man Who Broke a Thousand Chains&#8221;, for his role in ending the brutal chain gang system in the South. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[11],"class_list":["post-2113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-memory","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2113"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9916,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2113\/revisions\/9916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2113"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=2113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}