Abolishing Slavery But Keeping The Slaves

Title: Slavery By Another Name

Rating: 5 Stars

In 1861, America went to war against itself. Was it going to fulfill its dream of equality and opportunity for all or was it going to continue to give the lie to these ideals by continuing slavery? After four years of battle, over 600,000 soldiers dead, and wide destruction of territory, freedom won. Slavery was abolished. America took a huge step forward in its path to freedom.

So the story goes, but hold up a second. Cotton still needed to be picked. Dangerous jobs in primitive factories still needed to be worked. Coal still needed to be mined from dark, dangerous caverns.

Southern farmers, mine owners, and factory owners could not run their businesses without slaves. In fact, slaves had been doing the work for so long that, in some cases, white people literally didn’t know how to run their businesses. Their businesses were built on an economic model that didn’t support paying even the most meager of wages. After centuries of treating black people with contempt, hatred, and fear, it was simply inconceivable for many white people to even contemplate treating black people with anything approaching equality.

Unfortunately for black people, the thirteenth amendment prohibiting slavery has a huge gaping exception. The amendment states that: “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”.

The solution became obvious. The first step was to arrest a black man. If there was a particular need for labor (eg a crop was coming in or a new mine was opening), the owner would notify the local sheriff and arrests of black men would then suddenly spike. The charges were trivial, ranging from vagrancy (and a black man was considered a vagrant if he did not have evidence that he was actively under the employ of a white man) to ludicrous charges like speaking loudly in the presence of a white woman. The arrested man would be sent to jail and would be arraigned in front of the local justice of the peace. These justices were essentially the local big shot running their own legal fiefdom. The black man, having no rights to representation, was swiftly found guilty. He was then fined. Not only was he fined for the crime, but he was also fined for the cost of the justice, of any witnesses, the sheriff, and for his time in jail. By the time it all added up, there was no way that he had the money to pay the fine. In lieu of paying the fine, the man would instead be sentenced to up to a year in jail. Yes, for the crime of speaking loudly in the presence of a white woman, a man could be sentenced to a year.

Once sentenced, then a farmer or a mine owner would approach the sheriff and pay a small monthly fee to lease the now prisoner. This was a significant source of income to all participants in the justice system. It goes without saying that the prisoner saw none of this money.

The mine owner would take possession of the prisoner and could do whatever he wanted with him. The prisoner was often chained at all times. He would be worked in long shifts in very dangerous situations. He would hardly be provided food. He would be provided with a daily quota of work. If he did not meet the quota, he would be lashed with a whip by an overseer. His prison sentence could be extended for arbitrary reasons. If he tried to escape, he would be hunted down by dogs and whipped even harder.

If anything, this was even worse than slavery. With slavery, at least the slave had some intrinsic property value, as horrible as that is. Here, the slave could be worked to death and the mine owner would just go get another. If a prisoner was recalcitrant, he would be murdered by the overseer and dumped into a swamp. The death rate for these prisoners ranged from 25% to 40%.

It really is as horrible as it sounds. If a mother could not pay her debt, her children could be used as labor. If a black farmer could not pay a debt to a white landowner, instead of evicting him, the landowner would have the farmer arrested on fraud. The landowner could then get the farmer’s labor for free. If someone had a need for labor, any black man walking down the street could be falsely arrested, convicted, and be sent off to die under slave conditions. It changed the behavior of black people that weren’t arrested. They were incentivized to stay in the relative safety of white owned farms. Even though they could barely eke out an existence under those conditions, it was marginally better than dying as a slave at the bottom of a coal mine. Enslaved black prisoners were used as a tool to defeat attempts at unionization.

This started shortly after The Civil War and did not completely end until World War II. Several factors brought about its end. Modern production methods removed much of the backbreaking labor that was previously required. The arrival of boll weevils laid waste to the cotton fields. The Great Depression killed labor demand. During World War II, Germany was able to make use of America’s poor treatment of blacks for propaganda purposes. In response, the federal government began to more aggressively prosecute suspected slavery. A middle class white boy on a cross country trek got caught, arrested, convicted, was leased out, and died while being brutally treated. The resulting outcry that a relatively privileged white boy got entrapped led Florida to outlaw the practice. The federal government didn’t get around to writing an explicit anti-slavery law until 1951.

There’s nothing good here. This was one of the hardest books that I’ve read in years.

Before we pat ourselves too much on the back of how far we’ve progressed, we should probably look around a bit. Think about the private prisons currently in place. Many of them have a required minimum number of prisoners. If they fall below the minimum, the state is required to pay extra. This directly incentivizes states to convict at a higher rate. Think about our bail system. People today arrested on relatively minor charges are required to post bail. If they cannot, they stay in prison. Think about mass incarceration. People of color are sentenced at much higher rates with much higher sentences than white people for equivalent crimes.

People who always respond to Black Lives Matter with all lives matter should read books like this to understand. There’s a reason that people of color have a fundamental distrust of the legal process. From day one of our country to the present day, the legal system has, for them, not been a tool of protection but a tool of oppression.