Going into this, I was familiar with sharecropping and its injustices, but only vaguely aware of peonage/debt servitude in the United States. Hell Put to Shame quickly rectified that, and introduced not only the pervasiveness of peonage throughout the South, but also the 1921 mass murder that brought the system into the general consciousness.
The story of the Williams plantation and the eleven men murdered in an attempt to cover up their virtual enslavement is horrifying, as it should be. Swift relies heavily on primary sources, often directly quoting witnesses, lawmen, and perpetrators in order to showcase the crime itself, as well as the state of race relations in the South more generally. The book is incredibly well-researched, with extensive primary sources (trial transcripts, newspaper articles, legal codes, family interviews, etc.) that document the events of the crime and resulting trials, as well as input from historians to provide context of the time period.

I will be honest by admitting that I didn’t finish this book; I only got about a third end, before I just skimmed a few pages and walked away in disgust.

Why? Well, I came expecting to get a discussion about the issue of race in America, the many ways racism manifests itself, and how even good people unintentionally wind up playing into it. Instead, I received a court procedural more concerned about the strategies and thoughts of the white people involved in the story, rather than the black people directly experiencing the suffering and trauma.

When Martin Scorese set out to direct the film adaptation of “Killers of the Flower Moon,” he initially told the story from the white investigators sent to unravel the massive plot. However, he quickly realized that this story needed to be told from the perspective of its victims—the Osage Indians targeted by racist, greedy whites—who directly experienced the suffering, not another tale about brave white outsiders coming to the rescue of innocent people of color.

I wish this book had done the same.

Not a fun history to read, but necessary to truly understand the United States. So many people forget that the 1920s saw the resurgence of the KKK, and this book tells of one set of consequences of the virulent racism that the country chose to ignore or even celebrate.