Convict leasing in the south in
this period becomes a new way
of racial control among white southerners
attempting to limit African American
economic independence and
freedom in general.
And what that means is that
state officials would sell
the labor of an African America
prisoner to a private contractor.
The terms of that agreement
usually involved a period of time,
say ten days for a very
minor sentence to up to a year.
And in exchange for getting the labor
of the prisoner and taking full custody
of the prisoner by the private contractor,
the state would receive revenue.
What that meant in terms of what
convict leasing involved was that
African Americans would work in any
industry, whether working for
a private farmer, whether it was in
a brick making factory, a coal mine,
any number of business concerns and
the business owner would have
absolute dominion over the Black person
for the period of time of the lease.
But once you were in the system,
you could spend the rest of
your life there and that was a direct
consequence of the reality of being
a convict lease and having to fight
literally to survive day by day
in incredibly brutal conditions.