Convict leasing

Convict leasing was a system in which governments leased imprisoned people to private employers for labor. It expanded across the American South after the Civil War, disproportionately exploiting Black people.

Vagrancy laws: Laws that criminalize being without visible means of support or, in some versions, being unemployed. Their broad enforcement made unemployment a route into forced labor.
Reconstruction era: The period of political and social change in the United States after the Civil War, from 1865 to 1877. Convict leasing took shape as Southern governments rebuilt institutions after emancipation.
Alabama convict leasing: Alabama's system of leasing incarcerated people to private employers, especially in mines and industrial works. Alabama's extensive system shows how leasing generated revenue for state government and employers.
John Henry T. McPherson: A Georgia prison commissioner associated with the state's convict leasing system in the late nineteenth century. His official role links prison administration to Georgia's leasing regime.
Slavery by Another Name: A 2008 book by Douglas A. Blackmon documenting forced labor imposed on Black people after emancipation. It traces convict leasing alongside other systems of coerced labor in the postwar South.
Debtors' prison: A prison where people were confined because they could not repay debts. Convict leasing compelled labor through criminal sentences, not simply confinement for unpaid debt.
Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution: The 1865 amendment that abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime. Its punishment exception enabled coerced labor imposed through criminal sentences.
Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company: A major American iron and steel company that operated mines and furnaces in Alabama. Its mining operations used convict labor under Alabama's leasing system.
Ida B. Wells: An African American journalist and anti-lynching activist who documented racial violence in the United States. Her reporting challenged racialized criminalization and violence that sustained forced labor.
Racial capitalism: An analysis of how economic systems create and exploit racial difference. Leasing joined racialized criminal punishment to private profit and public revenue.

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