Columbus Stockade Blues

Title:
Columbus Stockade Blues

Description:
BY TIM CHITWOOD --Ledger-Enquirer At the turn of the century, the stockade building was used as a police headquarters. t he history of the rich and powerful is written in books, the history of commoners in song. Recorded 80 years ago by two common men, the song "Columbus Stockade Blues" has carried the words "Columbus, Georgia" all the way around the world. Had Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton not traveled to Atlanta in 1927 to record "Stockade Blues," millions of people since might never have heard the words "Columbus, Georgia," nor sung them. Like many of history's rich and powerful men, today Darby and Tarlton are dead. But their song lives on, in the voices of Willie Nelson, Doc Watson, Leon Russell and Arlo Guthrie. And the Columbus Stockade still holds prisoners. The servant It might be the city's most dependable public servant, in one of the least desirable jobs. Whether the Columbus Stockade is the most famous local landmark is as open to question. Tell strangers you're from Columbus, Ga., and see if they know the name from the "Columbus Stockade Blues," the song that locks the words "Columbus" and "Georgia" together like a jail door: "Way down in Columbus, Georgia..." Way down in the Columbus Stockade, friends for more than a century have turned their backs on freedom, sometimes for months, sometimes only weekends. The city's oldest jail over the years has been a place where the regulars got to know each other. Today the jail made famous by the song still holds people convicted of petty offenses and sentenced to short time, or to what we today call public service. It serves essentially the same purpose as a century ago. "City Chain Gang" -- it's marked on a 1907 map, when the stockade complex still had two separate brick buildings, later to be joined by an extension stretching from the two-story eastern building next to Columbus Recorder's Court to the western building by the Muscogee County jail's parking lot. The western building, at 1 1/2 stories, long served as the stockade kitchen and dining hall. Today, it's used for storage. The eastern side of the conjoined buildings at 622 10th St. now holds 10-15 prisoners during the week and about 20 more on weekends, when those sentenced to public service come in at 6 p.m. Friday and leave at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. The trusties go out daily on work details, cleaning public buildings and picking up trash -- just as inmates did decades ago. "They can have anything from one weekend to 52 weekends," said Terri Ezell, the sheriff's commander in charge of the county jail. "It's all men." The stockade will hold up to 110. "For what it's being used for, it's serviceable for that," said retired Muscogee County Sheriff Gene Hodge. "For low-security weekenders and this type of thing, it works very well." The survivor The Columbus Stockade has outlived two younger jails, once served as the city's police headquarters and more recently as a fallback when the county jail got overcrowded. The city reopened and renovated it to relieve overcrowding in 1981. Hodge was the sheriff then. He was under a court order to alleviate the crush of prisoners then crowding a county jail built in 1939. City leaders decided to spend $25,000 bringing the old stockade up to code to hold inmates until a new jail opened.

Author:
JoePaull

Tags:
Columbus, Stockade, Blues, Jail, Jimmie, Tarlton, Thomas, Darby, Tim, Chitwood, Joe, Paull,