August Wilson wrote 10 plays chronicling Black life in the 20th century. His favorite, "Joe Turner's Come and Gone," is set in 1911 in a boarding house in Pittsburgh's Hill District. The play's title comes from "Joe Turner's Blues," written in 1915 by W.C. Handy. That song refers to a man named Joe Turney, the brother of Peter Turney, who was the governor of Tennessee from 1893 to 1897. Joe Turney transported Black prisoners, chained in a coffle, along the roads from Memphis to the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville. While en route, he handed over some of the convicts, for a commission, to white farmers. The prisoners he leased to the farmers worked for years in a system of convict leasing — slavery by another name.
