Slavery By Another Name, Convict Labor in the Jim Crow Deep South

Today we will study and reflect on the Pulitzer Prize winning book by
Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name, with the subtitle, The Re-
Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II. This
book documents both on an individual level and historically how the
convict labor system worked in the Deep South.
When searching for photographs, we ran across a really horrifying
picture of convict labor from 1903, of young black children, many of
whom may be as young as six years old, working in the fields in prison
stripes. The photo is titled, Orphaned and Criminal children, the back
story behind this picture must be horrifying. Where their parents thrown
in prison for vagrancy or being uppity? Or where some of their parents
lynched? Who knows, some of these youngsters may be buried in
unmarked graves at the edge of some lonely field.

Orphaned and "Criminal" Children, Library of Congress, 1903

These convict labor camps were often every bit as brutal as the Siberian
gulag labor camps in Russia under Stalin, in both systems many of the
prisoners died from overwork, neglect, abuse, and starvation.
To give you a preview, a major event in the history of convict labor was
when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, leading the United States to
formally declare war and enter World War II.
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used for this video.
Please feel free to follow along our PowerPoint script posted to
SlideShare. Please, we welcome interesting questions in the comments.
Let us learn and reflect together!

FDR Declares War on Japan; ships and planes were destroyed

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Peonage: Convict Labor
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A cotton plantation on the Mississippi, 1884
The 13th Amendment contained a fatal loophole that caused much suffering, and
death. The text of this amendment is: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted,
shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

To take advantage of this loophole, the former Confederate states passed
harsh vagrancy laws that criminalized “loafing,” which meant that any
black person who was picked up by the law in a southern town was
thrown in jail so he could be leased out to plantation owners under the
overseer’s whip, like it was under slavery, or they were leased out to
other businesses such as factories, railroads, brick kilns, and mines.
Convict leasing was brutal, sometimes convict laborers died on the job.
These convict laborers were often treated worse than slaves had been
treated, slaves had been valuable property before the Civil War, they
were worth as much then as economy cars are worth now, but after the
Civil War the life of a black freed man literally had no value.

Saying that after the Civil War the life of a black man had no value does
sound rather harsh and degrading, this comment has been made by
many scholars, including the former Yale professor in his YouTube videos
of his undergraduate classes on Black History, and he confirms that this
comment is as harsh as it is true.

https://youtu.be/kmLg8CDjOOY
https://youtu.be/89ulb20cy8Q
https://youtu.be/f5nPNnvDBCY https://youtu.be/GQesHoV5IdI
https://youtu.be/weGmYOe0Lyg

This link between democracy and justice is first seen
in the history of ancient Greece. When you study the
history of the radical democracy in ancient Athens,
what is clear is that democracy and trials by jury, and
a fair judicial system, developed together, hand in
glove. When the government is not fair and
equitable, neither is the judicial system fair and
equitable.

Likewise, the black man had been disenfranchised in
the former Confederate States by 1901, and also by
this time that judicial system of these states denied
due process to all black citizens, in violation of the
spirit of the 14th Amendment, though the Supreme
Court interpreted it so narrowly that, for practical
purposes, it no longer applied to black citizens, but
only protected corporations, which did not need
protection.

WEB Dubois observes, “If a white man is
assaulted by a white man or a Negro the
police are at hand. If a Negro is assaulted by a
white man, the police are more apt to arrest
the victim than the aggressor.” Blackmon cites
a case where many former slaves filed suit in
1868 seeking payment for the prior year’s
wages. The whites responded by burning
down the courthouse along with the
paperwork for 1,800 lawsuits for these cases.

WEB Dubois, in his book Black
Reconstruction, quotes this account, “In
some states where convict labor is sold to
the highest bidder, the cruel treatment” is
beyond description. “Prison inspectors find
convicts herded together, irrespective of
age; confined at night in shackles;
sometime packed like sardines in old box
cars. During the day they work under
armed guards, who stand ready to shoot
down any who may attempt to escape
from this hell on earth.” “Should one
escape, the bloodhounds track them
down,” and when they are “brought back,
they are severely flogged and put in
double shackles, or worse.”
Convicts leased to harvest timber in Florida, circa 1915

Blackmon says this about convict labor, “The
quasi-slavery of the twentieth century was rooted
in the nascent industrial slavery that flourished in
the last years of the Civil War. The same men who
built railroads with thousands of slaves and
proselytized for the use of slaves in southern
factories and mines in the 1850’s were also the
first to employ forced African American labor in
the 1870’s.” Most southern states enacted
vagrancy laws by 1865 that were so vaguely
worded that any blacks could be arrested if they
were on the streets and not working, some states
enacted laws making it illegal for black workers to
change employers without permission.
Convict laborers in Birmingham, 1907

The convict labor system was strongest in the Black
Belt, the rich cotton farmland stretching from
South Carolina through Georgia, Alabama,
Mississippi and Louisiana. As Blackmon states,
“here the moral rationalization of slavery, and the
view of slaves as the essential proof of white men’s
royal status, became as fundamental to white’s
perception of America as the concept of liberty
itself. A century later, this was the paradox of the
post-Civil War South, recognition of freed slaves as
full humans appeared to most white southerners
not as an extension of liberty but as a violation of
their liberty, and as a challenge to the legitimacy of
their definition of what it was to be white.”
African American convicts working
with axes, Reed Camp, SC, 1934

Working conditions were brutal for convict laborers,
the companies working them had no supervision,
they could chain them, whip them, or even shoot
them when they tried to escape. In the worst cases,
they were starved and brutalized. In the first two
years convicts were leased in Alabama, one in five
died, by the fourth year, nearly half of the convict
laborers died in Alabama.

Laboring convicts
at the Mississippi
State Penitentiary
at Parchman in
1911. When
Mississippi ended
convict leasing in
1906, all prisoners
were sent to
Parchman.

State inspectors said this
about private prisons for
convict workers in
Birmingham, Alabama: they
were “totally unfit for use,
without ventilation, without
adequate water supplies,
crowded to excess, filthy
beyond description.”
Prisoners were “poorly
clothed and fed, cruelly
punished; there were no
hospitals; the sick were
neglected; and they were so
intimidated” that they dared
not say anything about their
maltreatment. Convicts working on state road, North Carolina, 1936

THEODORE ROOSEVELT, THE BULLY PRESIDENT
Some changes were made under Theodore Roosevelt, the bully
President. Vice President Theodore Roosevelt became President
when William McKinley was assassinated in September 1901.
Earlier that year he had accepted an invitation to speak at the
black leader Booker T Washington’s school, the Tuskegee
Institute, and later Washington recommended a moderate for
an important US District Court judge. Roosevelt invited the black
educator to a private dinner in the White House but was
shocked at the outrage in the South for his inviting a colored
man to dine with his wife and children!

Booker Washington and Theodore Roosevelt at Tuskegee Institute, 1905

Booker Washington and Theodore Roosevelt at Tuskegee Institute, 1905
Senator Tillman of South Carolina ranted, “Now that Roosevelt has eaten
with that nigger Washington, we shall have to kill a thousand niggers to
get them back to their places.” The governor of Georgia said, “No
southerner can respect any white man who would eat with a negro.”

But then in May of 1903, under the Roosevelt
Administration, something else unthinkable
happened, a federal Secret Service detective was
interviewing blacks about labor practices related to
convict labor. They had no idea. Federal authorities
discovered multiple slavery rings in Alabama, in
Lowndes county they estimated there were
thousands of convict laborers hired by dozens of
local landowners.

Roosevelt speaking at
National Negro
Business League, 1900

US Attorney Reese said this
about the widespread practice:
“Peonage is crueler and more
inhuman than the slavery of
antebellum days, since then
the master conserved the life
and health of the slave for
business reasons just as he did
that of his horse or mule, but
now the master treated the
slave unmercifully and with the
sole object of getting the
greatest possible amount of
labor out of him. Moreover, a
peon costs but a few dollars
while a slave used to cost
several hundred dollars.”

Forty years after Lincoln emancipated the slaves, the first men in
Alabama were indicted by a grand jury for illegally holding slaves. The
defendants insisted that they were the friends of the blacks, that
everything they did was legal, except they had to admit that sometimes
paperwork was missing. There were frequent and flagrant attempts to
intimidate and tamper with the dirt-poor black witnesses. The grand
jury in Montgomery, Alabama, returned sixty-three indictments. In
addition, Attorney General Knox detected dozens of other cases of
peonage across Alabama, Georgia, and northern Florida. The national
press was covering these proceedings, causing shock and
embarrassment over these cruelties, which slowly helped change public
opinion, very slowly.

Emancipation
from Freedmen's
viewpoint,
illustration from
Harper's Weekly
1865

Coaxing a grand jury to indict was far less problematic
than persuading a white jury to convict fellow whites for
peonage. Some defendants who pled guilty were, to their
surprise, sentenced to serve short prison sentences. But
for at least one case covered by Blackmon, there were
likely more, the white jury refused to convict their fellow
white man for peonage, even when the evidence was
overwhelming. This meant that many of the guilty were
set free after pleading guilty after agreeing to pay a small
fine.

The Jury (1861) by John Morgan

The lynchings, the violence, the peonage continued, one
black minister even complained that his young daughter
had been kidnapped and local authorities would not help
with her return. In Louisiana, a federal marshal
investigating convict labor cases was forced to flee for his
life. This Roosevelt Administration just threw up their
hands, this was not a problem they could solve in the face
of widespread resistance, as southern juries could not be
relied on to convict.

THE BRUTALITY OF PEONAGE CONTINUES
The brutality of peonage continued through the 1930’s. In 1912,
the racist segregationist southern Woodrow Wilson was elected
president, assuring that the federal government would not
pursue civil rights cases. Lynchings continued, blacks were
denied the vote and due process, and after the black veterans
returned from fighting in World War I, insisting on their civil
rights, knowing how to bear arms, race riots erupted in many
cities, burning down black homes and businesses with no
compensation, and no justice.

This picture shows a
movable work camp
from 1910. The
inmates were
quartered in the
wagons equipped with
bunks and moved
from place to place.
The dogs are
bloodhounds used to
run down anyone who
attempted to escape.
Chain gang of convicts engaged in road work. Pitt County, NC. Autumn 1910.

Even in ancient times, where slavery was more
benign, there were two truths in any system of
slavery. First, women slaves were quite often
sexually assaulted, and since they were property,
this was not a crime. Second, the worst type of slave
was the slave who worked in the mines deep below
the earth.

In the Deep South, white men always could
take advantage of black girls. Blackmon
tells us how black girls were abused when
they inquired about their incarcerated
relatives or husbands. It was common
practice in many prisons for “girls to come
around to the jailer’s room for an hour of
sex in exchange for a favor to their man
inside.” Worse, “at the lumber camps in
southern Alabama, “women seeking the
freedom of their men were simply arrested
when they arrived, chained into their cells,
and kept to sexually service the men
running the camps. The slave camps and
mines produced scores of babies, nearly all
of them with white fathers.”
Convicts working on state road, North Carolina, 1936

Soon after Emancipation, Booker T Washington
worked in the coal mines as a young man before he
was able to go to school. He was not a convict
laborer, so he was able to quit as soon as he could.

Booker remembers working in the coal mine,
“the work was not only hard, but it was also
dangerous. There was always the danger of
being blown to pieces by a premature explosion
of powder, or of being crushed by falling
slate. Accidents were frequent, we were in
constant fear.” Many small children worked in
the coal mines, with no hope of gaining an
education. “Young boys who begin life in a coal-
mine are often physically and mentally
dwarfed. They soon lose ambition to do
anything else than to continue as a coal-miner.”
Booker T Washington

Blackmon chronicles the brutal condition
of the Pratt slave mines in Alabama.
“Inside the mine shafts deadly gases
accumulated in unventilated sections.
Work continued even as water, seeping
from the walls and fouled with the miner’s
waste and excrement, accumulated in the
shafts. Intestinal disorders, malaria,
pneumonia, and respiratory problems
dogged the men. Endless contact with coal
dust led to black lung disease, a miserable
and certain slow death.” African American convicts working with
axes, Reed Camp, South Carolina, 1934

Blackmon continues, “Hardly
a week passed that
accidents didn’t take men’s
fingers, hands, toes, or
worse. Often the cause was
a careless swing of a pick.
But almost as frequently
men were crushed by coal
falling before they expected
or pinned by railroad cars
that derailed. Sometimes
miners died by touching a
live wire.” And often
younger boys were molested
by the older men.
Georgia convicts working on a road in Oglethorpe County, 1941

In 1908 the Georgia Legislature established a
commission to examine the state’s convict leasing
system, they found that over three thousand blacks
lived in forced labor camps, and that over six
hundred black convict laborers had been resold to
other camps. In one camp, inmates with tuberculosis
were left to die in a shed.

African
American
"convicts"
leased to build
the railroad in
Asheville, North
Carolina, 1892

Blackmon notes, that
witnesses told the commission
that the prisoners working in a
brickyard kiln were “fed rotting
and rancid food, housed in
barracks rife with insects,
driven by whips into the
hottest and most intolerable
areas of the plant, and
continually required to work at
a constant run in the heat of
the ovens. The plant was so
hot that the guards didn’t carry
guns for fear their cartridges
would explode.” African American convicts working with shovels, Gould, Arkansas, 1934

There was much worse testimony. The next year,
with newspaper headlines blaring, the convict
leasing system was abolished in Georgia. Several
other states abolished convict leasing, some others
re-established it, and then in place of leasing came
another reform: the chain gang!
As an aside, all white chain gangs, like in Cool Hand
Luke, were unlikely, although sometimes poor
whites were swept up in the injustice.

FREEDOM AT LAST FROM PEONAGE
America would experience an event that would lead,
finally, to the federal government ending the practice of
convict labor in America. That was the day that would live
in infamy, December 12, 1941, when the Japanese forces
attacked Pearl Harbor. FDR knew that the fascist enemies
of America would exploit any news that blacks were being
exploited in our country. It was only five days after the
attack that Attorney General Biddle issued a directive to all
federal prosecutors that they should no longer ignore
cases of involuntary servitude, or convict labor.

In a wartime speech, Biddle
proclaimed, “One response of
this country to the challenge to
the ideals of democracy made
by the new ideologies of Fascism
and Communism has been a
deepened realization that the
values of our government must
be based on a belief in the
dignity and rights of man.”

These cases would now be
vigorously prosecuted.
Blackmon writes, “As the
war progressed, the
Department of Justice
vigorously prosecuted US
Sugar Company in Florida
for forcing black men into
their sugarcane fields.
Sheriffs who colluded with
the company were brought
to trial.”

Blackmon does not describe widespread resistance to this
new policy, although we know there was broad resistance,
he describes only a small number of prosecutions, because
times had changed. Black soldiers who returned home in
this World War refused to be docile, sometimes moving
north for better opportunities, and would later participate
in the civil rights movement that swept the country.

As Martin
Luther King
later said,
“There
comes a
time when
the cup of
endurance
runs over,
and men are
no longer
willing to be
plunged into
the abyss of
despair.”
Selma Protest, by Ted Ellis

DISCUSSION OF SOURCES
Our main source is Slavery By Another Name, a Pulitzer
Prize winning book written by Douglas Blackmon, he has a
mix of history and personal stories. This book is highly
recommended by the Reconstruction scholar, Eric Foner
of Columbia University.
Sometimes the incredible brutality of the Jim Crow system
of segregation is lost in the general histories, and this
brutality can be more evident in narrow histories such as
this one on convict labor.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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Slavery By Another Name, Convict Labor in the Jim Crow Deep South

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Slavery By Another Name, Convict Labor in the Jim Crow Deep South