hotels" and that "the drinking water is ltered and in warm weather
is cooled with ice."16 A second prison was opened at Slope No. 2
is cooled with ice." A second prison was opened at Slope No. 2
later in 1889, nearly doubling the number of convicts the company
could house. The company claimed to have spent $60,000 building
the structures and surrounding compound.
For the men beneath the surface, the view was very di erent. Prat
Mines was a scene of nightmarish human su ering and brutal
retaliation. Subjected to squalid living conditions, poor medical
treatment, scant food, and frequent oggings, hundreds died—the
victims of mine explosions, rock fal s, res, neglect, and, most
commonly, recurring outbreaks of disease. Many more left the
mines and work camps alive but physical y shat ered. If unclaimed
by relatives, those who died were quickly interred in crude burial
places adjacent to the prison camps or incinerated in one of the
company's coke ovens.
In hushed tones, survivors recounted to friends and relatives how
slave miners labored under ghastly conditions, working in pools of
putrid water that seeped out of the rock or leaked from equipment
used to soften the coal. The seepage was contaminated by mineral
residues and the prisoners’ own body waste, but was often the only
water available to drink. The contaminated seepage frequently
triggered waves of dysentery, a painful malady caused by drinking
water contaminated with human waste. Dysentery causes
in ammation of the large intestines, terrible stomach pains, and
uncontrol able diarrhea that leads to severe dehydration and,
ultimately for many, death. Dozens died each year during epidemics
of diarrhea and intestinal sickness that swept through the mines
with grim regularity, according to death registries maintained at
some mines. Gas from the miners’ headlamps and smoke from
blasts of dynamite and gunpowder choked the air. Deadly methane,
which occurs natural y in seams of coal, accumulated in poorly
ventilated sections of mines. An 1890 convict inspector described
"more sickness" at the Prat Mines "than any other place."17
An unintended distinction between antebel um slavery and the
new forced labor system became increasingly clear—and disastrous
new forced labor system became increasingly clear—and disastrous
for the men captured into it. Slaves of the earlier era were at least
minimal y insulated from physical harm by their intrinsic nancial
value. Their owners could borrow money with slaves as col ateral,
pay debts with them, sel them at a pro t, or extend the investment
through production of more slave children. But the convicts of the
new system were of value only as long as their sentences or
physical strength lasted. If they died while in custody, there was no
nancial penalty to the company leasing them. Another black
laborer would always be available from the state or a sheri . There
was no compel ing reason not to tax these convicts to their absolute
physiological limits.
The private guards who sta ed the slave labor mines and camps
were vulgar, untrained, and often inebriated. Placed under the
complete control of the companies and businessmen who acquired
them, the laborers su ered intense physical abuse and the
deprivation of food, clothing, medical care, and other basic human
needs. Guards, rarely supervised, hung men by their thumbs or
ankles as punishment. Convict slaves were whipped for failure to
work at the rate demanded by their overseers, commonly receiving
as many as sixty or seventy lashes at a time. Accounts of men or
women lashed until skin literal y fel from their backs were not
uncommon. Convicts who at empted repeated escapes were subject
to many of the same torturous restraints as their slave forebears—
shackles, bal s and chains, or objects riveted to iron cu s or col ars
to limit their mobility. A convict recaptured after escaping a labor
camp in Muscogee County, Georgia, had a steel ring placed around
his neck to which "was xed a spike, curling inward, so that rapid
running was impossible."18
Underfed and overworked convicts traveled from the Prat Mines
stockade to the mine through an underground manway before dawn
each day, and back through the same tunnel after dark. Only on
Sundays, when mining ceased for a day, would the prisoners see
sunlight. An 1889 report by Alabama legislators reported an
"immense amount of whipping" of inmates at Prat and other prison
mines.
mines.
During 1888 and 1889, seven of the black laborers forced into the
Slope No. 2 mine were children under the age of ten. Prison
inspection reports indicated that among nearly 1,100 men brought
there, only one third could read. Fewer than forty had prior
criminal records. Of the 116 prisoners who died, a large number
were teenagers.
The o cial registry of casualties listed the death of twelve-year-
old Arthur Easter in March 1888 for unknown reasons. Fifteen-year-
old George Wolfork, a waiter before being seized into the prison,
died in May 1888 of typhoid after rst being stabbed in the arm.
Malachi Coleman, a sixteen-year-old trained as a bricklayer, serving
a four-month term, died in May after having his "leg mashed."
Luther Metcalf, sixteen years old, died of unknown causes in
October. John Cot on expired in November, six weeks after arrival.
The cause of death was listed as "arm o below shoulder." Other
common causes of death from just one page of the registry
included: "yel ow fever; abscess lower jaw; shot in neck; shot in
shoulder and finger; right eye out; skul fractured."19
Volatile mixtures of fumes or combinations of "afterdamp"—air
with dangerously elevated levels of carbon monoxide and other
gases—and coal dust col ected in the poorly ventilated shafts,
sometimes igniting to cause huge explosions. Gas ignited in Shaft
No. 1, kil ing eleven men in one 1891 incident, al but one of
whom were forced workers. At other times, gas did not explode but
began burning as it passed out of the coal—igniting the seam itself
and turning the mine passage into a tunnel of literal y aming
rock.20 Some res could only be extinguished by ooding the mine
shafts entirely.
Under such execrable conditions, prisoners at empted
increasingly brazen escapes, with almost monthly frequency. More
than once, convicts themselves at empted to set re to the mine in
hopes of breaking free during the ensuing melee. Invariably,
escapees or others died in the plots. The company reported one
such breakout in May of 1890, claiming that three white prisoners
such breakout in May of 1890, claiming that three white prisoners
and one black convict staged a re alarm in the middle of the night.
"In the terror and confusion, while the of icers were trying to restore
quiet," the four broke free of the stockade, guards said. One
prisoner remained free for some time; a second was mortal y shot.
&nb
sp; Two others— Bob Crawford and Noah Marks—were immediately
recaptured, most likely by the prison's bloodhounds.21
In the meantime, the pent-up hostilities of the stockade erupted
into riot. "It became necessary for us to adopt some prompt and
severe measures to reduce the insubordinates to subjection. But
everything was set led in a short time," read the company report. It
is not di cult to imagine what those measures were. Mine o cials
said Crawford, a white man from outside the South, "commit ed
suicide on the day afterwards."22
Conditions at Sloss-She eld's Coalburg slave camp were even
worse than at the Prat Mines. Several hundred prisoners purchased
from judges and sheri s in twenty-three Alabama counties—
including the Cot ingham homeplace of Bibb—had been acquired
along with the purchase of the mines. In 1889, an epidemic of
measles and dysentery swept through the men.
"The sickness hung on as if loathe to give up its hold upon this
unfortunate place," wrote one state inspector. He cal ed the place
"disastrous." Of 648 forced laborers at the mine in 1888 and 1889,
34 percent did not survive. At the Prat Mines, 18 percent died. Al
but a handful were black.23 Another visitor in the same period
wrote the Alabama governor that every slave worker who had been
in the mine for at least six months had contracted dysentery. He
cal ed the death rate "enormous, frightful, astonishing."24
Convicts in Sloss-She eld's prison compound reached the mine
b y shu ing through a long, low-ceilinged shaft extending from
inside the wal s of their prison compound.25 A special commit ee
of the Alabama legislature studying the convict system in 1889
reported that "many convicts in the coal mines …have not seen the
sun shine for months." In the rst two weeks of June of that year,
sun shine for months." In the rst two weeks of June of that year,
137 floggings were given to the 165 forced laborers at the mine.26
Conditions were so demoralizing at the Coalburg mine, the
convicts so beaten and bedraggled, that laborers did not even
choose to at end church services on Sundays—the one regular
diversion permit ed forced workers. "There are but few of the
convicts that manifest any interest in any kind of religious services,"
wrote Evan Nicholson, a chaplain at the camp in 1890.27
The horror of the mortality rates and living conditions was
underscored by the triviality of the al eged o enses for which
hundreds of men were being held. At the end of the 1880s,
thousands of black men across the South were imprisoned in work
camps only for violations of the new racial codes, completely
subjective crimes, or no demonstrable crime at al . Among the
"felons" sold to the Prat Mines in 1890, seven men were working
for the crime of bigamy, four for homosexuality, and six for
miscegenation—an o ense almost solely prosecuted against black
men who engaged in sex with white women. Many others had been
arrested and sold for ostensible crimes that explicitly targeted
blacks’ assertions of their new civil rights: two for "il egal voting"
and eleven on a conviction for "false pretense," the euphemism for
new laws aimed at preventing black men from leaving the employ
of a white farmer before the end of a crop season.28
The application of laws writ en to criminalize black life was even
more transparent in the prisoners convicted of misdemeanors in the
county courts. Among county convicts in the mines, the crimes of
eight were listed as "not given." There were twenty-four black men
digging coal for using "obscene language," ninety-four for the
al eged theft of items valued at just a few dol ars, thirteen for
sel ing whiskey, ve for "violating contract" with a white employer,
seven for vagrancy two for "sel ing cot on after sun set"—a statute
passed to prevent black farmers from sel ing their crops to anyone
other than the white property owner with whom they share-
cropped—forty-six for carrying a concealed weapon, three for
bastardy, nineteen for gambling, twenty-four for false pretense.
bastardy, nineteen for gambling, twenty-four for false pretense.
Through the enforcement of these openly hostile statutes, thousands
of other free blacks realized that they could be secure only if they
agreed to come under the control of a white landowner or
employer. By the end of 1890, the new slavery had generated
nearly $4 mil ion, in current terms, for the state of Alabama over
the previous two years.29
By then, local sheri s, deputies, and some court o cials also
derived most of their compensation from fees charged to convicts
for each step in their own arrest, conviction, and shipment to a
private company. The mechanisms of the new slavery reached
another level of re nement, as trading networks for the sale and
distribution of blacks emerged over wide areas. Sheri s were now
incentivized to arrest and obtain convictions of as many people as
possible—regardless of their true guilt or whether a crime had been
commit ed at al . Ever larger numbers of other whites also began to
seek their own slice of the growing pro ts generated by the trade in
compulsory black labor.
"It is plain that [prisoners] are fed as cheaply as possible in order
that the sheri s may have wide margin of pro t," wrote one jail
inspector, Dr. C. F. Bush. "I have had several sheri s to admit to me
that, without pro t from the feed bil , they would not have the
of ice, as it was one of their greatest sources of revenue."
Another o cial said the system "legalized graft" and "resulted in
starvation." A third prison doctor wrote that men held in the county
jails routinely "made their appearance pale, weak and anemic, and
the bodies covered with ulcers due to have been con ned in vermin
ridden, insanitary and poorly ventilated jails and the lack of a
suf icient amount of…food."30
In J. W. Comer's remote home territory, Barbour County, in the
cot on country of southern Alabama, nearly seven hundred men
were leased between June 1891 and November 1903, most for $6 a
month, each logged elegantly into a leather-bound Convict Record.
Most were sent to mines operated by Tennessee Coal, Iron &
Railroad or Sloss-Shef ield.31
Railroad or Sloss-Shef ield.
Steady streams of telegrams and let ers radiated from sheri s,
labor agents, and company executives in a furious search for
additional laborers or to induce men in positions of pet y power to
arrest ever more men under any circumstances. O ers to bring in a
particular black man for sale or pleading that certain African
Americans be seized for sale poured into the o ce of Shelby
County sheri Lewis T Grant in 1891. G. Bridges, an agent of the
Louisvil e & Nashvil e Railroad, wrote Grant on February 24,
complaining about the number of itinerant men near the station in
the town of Calera, one stop away from Columbiana. "We are
su ering from a surplus of loa ng negroes and white tramps, and
car
breaking and pilfering is frequently indulged in…. Perhaps you
might have a lot of them arrested for trespassing on the property of
the Railroad Co."32
Bridges was less than thril ed when Sheri Grant suggested that
the railroad pay him for the arrest of the unwanted men. "Thank
you for the o er of services you so kindly make," the railroad man
responded a day later. He suggested that instead the sheri 's deputy
be sent out. "Would it not be more convenient and expeditious, to
cal on him to arrest trespassers?" These were business transactions,
not law enforcement.33
Escambia County sheri James McMil an wrote on March 13
asking Grant to watch out for a seventeen-year-old "yel ow" boy and
an accompanying woman with a lit le girl. "Please get them up for
me and if they fail to make bond which I expect they wil I wil
come or send after them."
Je erson County sheri P. J. Rogers telegrammed on April 9 to
"look out for Andrew Cubes a yel ow negro about 22 years old who
escaped from guards at Calera last night while in transit to our
place from Selma, $50 reward."34
Sloss-She eld sent preprinted l -in-the-blank postcards to
sheri s in every county, announcing the escape of convicts and the
reward placed on their head. "$25 REWARD!" read the card mailed
on April 21, 1891, seeking 175-pound Dan Homer, a twenty-two-
on April 21, 1891, seeking 175-pound Dan Homer, a twenty-two-
year-old county convict with dark black skin, black whiskers, and
scars on his left thumb and left hand.35
Often the sheri s’ correspondence re ected a simple gamble by
some treacherous white man that if he pointed out a promising
black laborer, a sheri or deputy would nd a reason to arrest him
and share the nancial bene ts. "There is a negro up there at the
Public Works by the name of Peter McFarland …he is a ginger cake
color Black hair Black eyes hair cut close …he is wanted for
Burglary if you wil arrest him and put him in jail. I wil give you
$10 …wire me at once if you get him," wrote F. E. Bur t , from
Selma, on May 26.
The next day, Calhoun County deputy sheri John Rowland
wrote Grant: "Is there a reward for one Wil Riddle wanted in your
county for disturbing public worship?"
W. B. Fulton of Pensacola, Florida, wrote the Shelby County
Slavery by Another Name Page 15