‘The Defiant Ones’: Working Together for Survival

Stanley Kramer’s film imagines the fates of two prison gang escapees, one black and one white, who have nothing to unite them except their chain.
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PG | 1 h 36 min | Drama | 1958

Courts in early 20th-century America used chain-gang prison labor to help build state roads, highways, bridges, and railroads. This phenomenon, of largely black prisoners pounding rock and shoveling dirt while chained to each other, died out with the Great Depression, although some southern states used these gangs until the mid-20th century.

Rudolph Lambert Fernandez
Rudolph Lambert Fernandez
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Rudolph Lambert Fernandez is an independent writer who writes on pop culture.
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