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Aerial view of Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, 19th century.

Untangling the 19th Century Roots of Mass Incarceration

Popular accounts often trace the origins of forced penal labor to the post-Civil War South. But a vast system of forced penal labor existed in the antebellum North.
by Rebecca McLennan via LPE Project on May 16, 2023
African American prisoners in Alabama post-Reconstruction.

How the Slavery-Like Conditions of Convict Leasing Flourished After the Collapse of Reconstruction

On the terror that filled the void left by the retreat of federal authority in the South.
by Jefferson Cowie via Literary Hub on November 23, 2022
Photograph shows two white men overseeing African American men hammering boulders as others walk with wheelbarrows.

Locked Up: The Prison Labor That Built Business Empires

Companies across the South profited off the forced labor of people in prison after the Civil War – a racist system known as convict leasing.
by Margie Mason, Robin McDowell via AP News on September 19, 2022
Artwork depicting two people with shovels and a machette, entitled “Broken Skies: Nou poko fini” (We aren't done yet), 2019, by Didier William

Tarry with Me

Reclaiming sweetness in an anti-Black world.
by Ashanté M. Reese via Oxford American on March 23, 2021

This Day in Labor History: December 1, 1868

On folk hero John Henry.
by Erik Loomis via Twitter on December 1, 2019

Let’s Recognize the African-American Prisoners Who Helped Build America

Without them, the economy of the American South would never would have recovered after the Civil War.
by Talitha L. LeFlouria via The Root on February 26, 2019
African American prison laborers.

A School District Wants to Relocate the Bodies of 95 Black Forced-Labor Prisoners

A school district owns the property where the bodies of 95 black convict-lease prisoners from Jim Crow era were buried.
by Meagan Flynn via Washington Post on October 25, 2018
Railworkers watch dignitaries on an approaching train.
partner

How Slave Labor Built the State of Florida—Decades After the Civil War

Behind the whitewashed history of the Sunshine State.
by Bryan Bowman, Kathy Roberts Forde via Made By History on May 17, 2018
George Wallace pointing to map of United States with "Wallace Country" written on it.

How the Right Turned “Freedom” Into a Dog Whistle

A new book traces the long history of cloaking racism in the language of resistance to an overbearing federal government.
by Eric Herschthal via The New Republic on December 8, 2022
shovels stuck in black scribbles representing dirt

Eating Dirt, Searching Archives

There are many black afterlives that are yet to be unearthed.
by Endia Hayes via Southern Cultures on July 16, 2021
A man sitting on a table.

A More Perfect Union

On the Black labor organizers who fought for civil rights after Reconstruction and through the twentieth century.
by Arvind Dilawar via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 16, 2020

Somebody Died, Babe: A Musical Cover-Up of Racism, Violence, and Greed

Beneath the popular folk song, “Swannanoa Tunnel” and the railroad tracks that run through Western North Carolina is a story of blood, greed, and obfuscation.
by Kevin Kehrberg, Jeffrey A. Keith via The Bitter Southerner on August 4, 2020

Will The Reckoning Over Racist Names Include These Prisons?

Many prisons, especially in the South, are named after racist officials and former plantations.
by Keri Blackinger via The Marshall Project on July 29, 2020
A group of seven black sharecroppers stand by the road.

Black Americans, Crucial Workers in Crises, Emerge Worse Off – Not Better

In many national crises, black Americans have been essential workers – but serving in crucial roles has not resulted in economic equality.
by Calvin Schermerhorn via The Conversation on June 17, 2020

Five Myths About Slavery

No, the Civil War didn’t end slavery, and the first Africans didn’t arrive in America in 1619.
by Daina Ramey Berry, Talitha L. LeFlouria via Washington Post on February 7, 2020

A Lost Work by Langston Hughes Examines the Harsh Life on the Chain Gang

In 1933, the Harlem Renaissance star wrote a powerful essay about race. It has never been published in English—until now.
by Steven Hoelscher via Smithsonian on July 1, 2019

Prison Abolition Syllabus 2.0

An updated prison syllabus in response to the national prison strike of 2018.
by Dan Berger, Garrett Felber, Elizabeth Hinton, Anyabwile Love, Kali Nicole Gross via Black Perspectives on September 8, 2018
Title page to Ida B. Wells's book about lynching.

Is It Legal?

Deferring to power and authority leads inevitably to autocracy.
by William Horne via In Case Of Emergency on February 7, 2025
A group of black prisoners, shoveling.

Race, Prison, and the Thirteenth Amendment

Critiques of the Thirteenth Amendment have roots in a long history of activists who understood the imprisonment of Black people as a type of slavery.
by Daryl Michael Scott, Livia Gershon via JSTOR Daily on September 21, 2023
The Ferguson Unit Rhythmeer Band plays at the Jim Ferguson Unit in Madison County, Texas.

The Blues Behind Bars: How Southern Prisons Shaped American Music

Incarcerated musicians have crafted some of the most iconic songs in American music history while prisons reap the profits.
by Zeb Larson via Scalawag on June 8, 2023
Cover of "Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance To Federal Power"

The Little Man’s Big Friends

A new book seeks to explain why many Americans, especially but not exclusively in the South, have understood freedom as an entitlement for white people.
by Eric Foner via London Review of Books on May 24, 2023
Johnny Cash in front of a microphone.

Johnny Cash Is a Hero to Americans on the Left and Right. But His Music Took a Side.

Listen to Blood, Sweat and Tears again.
by Michael Stewart Foley via Slate on December 7, 2021
Zoomed in 1949 map of Atlanta.

A Brief History of the Atlanta City Prison Farm

Slave labor, overcrowding, and unmarked graves — the buried history of Atlanta City Prison Farm from the 1950s to 1990s shows it’s no place of honor.
via Atlanta Community Press Collective on August 14, 2021
Raphael Warnock and Stacey Abrams
partner

The Long History of Black Women Organizing in Georgia Might Decide Senate Control

Black women in Georgia have shaped local and state politics for more than a century.
by Danielle Phillips-Cunningham via Made By History on December 10, 2020

The Origins of Policing in America

How American policing grew out of efforts to control the labor of poor and enslaved people.
by Chenjerai Kumanyika, Khalil Gibran Muhammad via Washington Post on September 24, 2020
White state militia man with rifle confronting a Black man in a U.S. military uniform, while others look on.

How Racist Policing Took Over American Cities

"The problem is the way policing was built," historian Khalil Muhammad says.
by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Anna North via Vox on June 6, 2020

Reconstruction in America

Mass lynchings of Black people following the Civil War.
by Jennifer Rae Taylor, Kiara Boone, Jonathan Gibson, Sade Stevens, Kayla Vinson, Trey Walk, Sumita Rajpurohit, Breana Lamkin via Equal Justice Initiative on April 23, 2020
Illustration of slavecatchers surrounding a fugitive.

‘A World Turned Upside Down’: How Slavery Morphed into Today’s Carceral State

A new book uses the story of a former slave trader who profited after the Civil War by trafficking in convict labor to trace the historical roots of mass incarceration and racial profiling.
by Isidoro Rodriguez via The Crime Report on January 28, 2020

Mass Incarceration Didn't Start with the War on Crime

A review of "City of Inmates" by Kelly Lytle Hernández.
by Llana Barber via The Metropole on April 24, 2019

Southern Baptist Convention’s Flagship Seminary Details Its Racist, Slave-Owning Past

"We are living in an age of historical reckoning," said Southern Baptist leader R. Albert Mohler Jr.
by Marisa Iati via Washington Post on December 12, 2018
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