Convict leasing
Convict leasing was a system of forced penal labor that was practiced historically in the Southern United States before it was formally abolished during the 20th century.
[5] African Americans, mostly adult males, due to "vigorous and selective enforcement of laws and discriminatory sentencing", comprised the vast majority—though not all—of the convicts leased.
The writer Douglas A. Blackmon described the system: It was a form of bondage distinctly different from that of the antebellum South in that for most men, and the relatively few women drawn in, this slavery did not last a lifetime and did not automatically extend from one generation to the next.
But it was nonetheless slavery – a system in which armies of free men, guilty of no crimes and entitled by law to freedom, were compelled to labor without compensation, were repeatedly bought and sold, and were forced to do the bidding of white masters through the regular application of extraordinary physical coercion.
[8]Convict leasing in the United States was widespread in the South during the Reconstruction Period (1865–1877) after the end of the Civil War, when many Southern legislatures were ruled by majority coalitions of African Americans and Radical Republicans,[9][10] and Union generals acted as military governors.
Lynds' approach, deemed the Auburn System, of using prison labor for profit expanded across the North within the next fifteen years, to the south and west of the United States, and to other regions including Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and Upper Canada.
[13] The criminal justice system allegedly colluded with private planters and other business owners to entrap, convict and lease black people as prison laborers.
[12] The constitutional basis for convict leasing is that the 1865 Thirteenth Amendment, while abolishing slavery and involuntary servitude generally, permits it as a punishment for crime.
[15] In May, the state entered into a second agreement with Fort and his business partner Joseph Printup for another 100 convicts, this time for $1,000, to work on the Selma, Rome and Dalton Railroad, also in north Georgia.
In Tennessee, the convict leasing system was ended on January 1, 1894 because of the attention brought by the "Coal Creek War" of 1891, an armed labor action lasting more than a year.
Free coal miners attacked and burned prison stockades, and freed hundreds of black convicts; the related publicity and outrage turned Governor John P. Buchanan out of office.
Bibb Graves, who became Alabama's governor in 1927, had promised during his election campaign to abolish convict leasing as soon as he was inaugurated, and this was finally achieved by the end of June 1928.
[citation needed] In Tennessee, African Americans represented 33 percent of the population at the main prison in Nashville as of October 1, 1865, but, by November 29, 1867, their percentage had increased to 58.3.
[25] While some believe the demise of the system can be attributed to exposure of the inhumane treatment suffered by the convicts,[26] others indicate causes ranging from comprehensive legislative reforms to political retribution.
Tabert was then leased to the Putnam Lumber Company in Clara, a town in the Florida Panhandle approximately 60 miles (97 km) south of Tallahassee in Dixie County.
