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.