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Slavery by Another Name

Page 15

by Douglas A. Blackmon


  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

 

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