A social media post that circulated during the recent Juneteenth holiday explored the history of how police have interacted with Blacks in America.
The post helped explain present day conflict between police and Blacks, racial disparities in our criminal justice system and why systemic racism persists.
The author wrote that soon after the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was ratified, nine Southern states began leasing out prison convicts for labor, a practice known as peonage.
“This made the business of arresting Blacks very lucrative, which is why hundreds of white men were hired by these states as police officers,” the author wrote.
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The 13th Amendment outlawed slavery and was ratified in 1865, the same year the Civil War ended. The amendment, however, carved out a glaring exception that allowed slavery under one condition.
“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,” according to the amendment.
The author of the social media post pointed out the significance of wording that permitted slavery as punishment for crime.
“Did you catch that?” the author wrote. “Lawmakers used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes.”
Southern state legislatures enacted laws known as Black Codes that kept poor, freed Black people tied to their former owners’ plantations and farms. A common offense was vagrancy, the crime of being unemployed. A conviction carried a hefty fine that many were unable to pay.
The author provided examples of Black Codes.
“In Louisiana, it was illegal for a Black man to preach to Black congregations without special permission in writing from the president of the police,” the author wrote.
I’ll confess I was not the best student. I may not have paid close attention when this chapter of American history was covered in school. Or, perhaps, this background and context was omitted from the studies I learned.
We all know you shouldn’t take everything you read on the internet as gospel. One should verify stories through independent research. I quickly learned USA Today wrote about the social media post in 2020.
“The Facebook posts states police sought out and arrested Black people who were violating Black Codes and leased these people — men, women and children — to plantations, coal mines or railroad companies,” the newspaper reported. “The business or plantation owners paid the state for every prisoner who worked for them.”
Additional research led to multiple reports from credible sources about this shameful episode from our past. In 2021, the Library of Congress website linked to a piece titled, “The Convict Leasing System: Slavery In Its Worst Aspects.”
Legal slavery persisted for decades in America after the 13th Amendment was ratified. Railroad barons and industrialists used prison slave labor to get rich. Some offenders were arrested for crimes as petty as walking on grass or loitering.
“Arrests were often made by professional crime hunters who were paid for each ‘criminal’ arrested, and apprehensions often escalated during times of increased labor needs,” librarian Lynn Weinstein wrote.
Racist policing practices endured from Jim Crow through the War on Drugs. Knowing about these past practices changes one’s understanding of the role of police. Many take for granted that police exist to protect and serve. They solve crimes and keep communities safe.
What happens when you learn that in many instances, the only reason for the existence of police was to increase the supply of criminals who could then be used as slave labor?
Acknowledging facts of the past ought to help ensure the integrity of our criminal justice system today. Yet not only do many want to forget the past, they want to make it a crime to teach about it. The convict leasing system would certainly fall under critical race theory concepts that several states have banned from schools.
Rather than try to bury our past, we should try to learn from it. I’m grateful that Juneteenth is now a federal holiday that celebrates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.
I’m thankful that a post about leasing convicts as slave labor randomly popped up in a social media feed during the recent Juneteenth holiday. I was troubled to learn about this example of systemic racism from our shared past. I believe the discovery has helped improve my understanding of present day conflicts between police and Black Americans.
Ted Slowik is a columnist at the Daily Southtown.
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