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The Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company employed mostly African Americans arrested by ‘crime hunters’. These crime hunters got paid for each arrest made, and even if you were found innocent you could still end up in the convict leasing system if unable to pay the court fees.
Conditions at the company were horrid, rife with disease, injury, and abuse. The annual rate of turnover was 400%, with 60 workers dying in just a year. 10% of the worker population died each year. -
The company leased out it’s convicted workers to other companies, essentially turning the convicted workers into property that could be bought and sold. It was a recreation of slavery that lasted until 1910. The company even operated it’s own prison, as if the extent of their evil wasn’t apparent enough. -
I am including this article because it is a horrifying piece of history that cannot be taken as anything but a sign of an era of complete contempt for those less fortunate than oneself.
Read the original text here. It was published on January 1st, 1860.
https://www.nytimes.com/1860/01/17/archives/what-shall-be-done-with-and-for-our-vagrant-children.html
“ Nor can many persons imagine the unlimited nature of the demand in America for children's labor. ” -
In 1865, order was given by President Andrew Johnson to appoint Fullerton as the new head honcho of the Freedmen’s bearu, specifically so he could enforce stricter vagrancy laws. Fullerton instructed the police to round up all ‘vagrants’ in the city of New Orleans. Fullerton claimed that “Nearly all vagrant blacks, and many who were not vagrants," were arrested in 2 days. He was praised by the newspapers for this. He also ordered for an orphanage for colored children to be shut down. -
Convict leasing is part of what is commonly refered to as Neoslavery, that is, slavery after the 13th ammendment. The last state to outlaw convict leasing was Alabama in 1928. Convict leasing allows those imprisoned by the state to be leased out to private contractors for unpaid labor. It persisted even after being banned in alabama, and only really ended in 1942 when abolished by FDR after the US entered WW2.
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Vagrancy laws were written to criminalize the act of being an idle person, wandering about without a means of support. However, this is largely irrelevant to their enforcement. They acted as a way for police to push freed men into the convict leasing system, and were essentially more extreme loitering laws.
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The date here refers to when these laws were being passed; not when they were in effect. Black Codes were laws specifically put into place to restrict the freedoms of freed men, often vaguely written and even taking text directly from slave codes with words switched around. These laws could be interpereted in such a way that ANYONE was guilty, and were designed specifically to force African Americans into the convict leasing system.
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Reconstruction was the post civil war process of ensuring the South would recover after the war without the threat of secession; along with various efforts to ensure the newly gained rights of African Americans were protected and upheld by the law. These efforts were not always fruitful, infact in many aspects reconstruction failed to ensure the promises it made for equal rights and a stronger union. Reconstruction was slowed in many ways, from assassination to militias.
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Are children considered vagrants? Unfortunately, yes. Anyone could write a complaint about “Gangs of vagrant youths” infesting the town. Superintendents wanted to use the vagrancy laws to compel students to be studious, parents would even try and get their own children arrested for vagrancy.
This is the root of many modern fears of the youth, fears of loitering, and the modern views many middle class parents have of youth culture. -
27 black men are arrested by a white mob for arming themselves in self defense.
27 black men are brought to the jail the next night, and killed.
The sheriff was compliant with the mob. For the next week, black people were terrorized, many resorting to tying red string around their arms to signify surrender and seeking of protection.
By the end of the violence 3 white republicans and 3 white democrats had been killed.
200 black people had been killed.
This was the Opelousas Massacre. -
As a result of the massacre, ZERO republican votes were counted during the election. It was an effective campaign of terrorism. The media praised it. They loved the culling of the “vagrants”. The election officials assumed anyone who didn’t vote for the democratic ticket would have been killed within 24 hours of their vote. The media would’ve called the vagrant votes fraudulent anyways, because they claimed vagrants were able to vote in multiple towns on account of being “wanderers”.
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Tensions in the south were rising, and many democrats had begun equating republicans with vagrancy, even calling for their arrests at times. The crime of vagrancy was evolving from a way to simply condemn anything deemed as an enemy to the southern democrats. This culminates on September 28. A group of white men attack a black teacher. Many black people arm themselves thinking Mr. Bentley, the teacher, died. He did not. They armed themselves out of a justified fear however.
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At the coal mines at coal creek, coal miners were replacing their paid workers with convicts leased from, and I want to note this, either the Tennessee prison system or the Tennessee Iron Company. I have two sources and one says the prison system and the other says the company, but at this point the two are essentially one system. 120 convict workers were to be leased out. 5 were white, the rest were black. -
On July 5th, the houses of the workers were destroyed to make way for a stockade for convict laborers. On July 14th, 300 armed laborers surrounded the stockade. The stockade guards immediately surrendered, and the convicts were freed by the workers and sent to Knoxville by train. On July 16th, three militias were sent to lead the Convicts back to the mines. They were lead by governor, who claimed to simply be enforcing the law. On July 20th, 2000 armed workers showed up to the stockade. -
The militia guarding the stockade surrendered immediately. The workers sent the freed convicts to Knoxville, and later that day, THEY DID IT AGAIN. THEY WENT TO ANOTHER MINE AND FREED MORE CONVICTS. On July 21th onward, the governor began working on trying to compromise with the workers, and once he said he would agree to eventually ending the law; the workers agreed to a 60 day truce.
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Various legal things around ending the system went on til October 1891, when the Tennessee supreme court ruled against the workers. On October 28th, the workers released a call to arms and dropped the truce, and on October 31st, various workers burned one of the stockades, and destroyed various pieces of company property. Over 300 convicts were freed and given supplies by the workers. On November 2nd, they did it again, freeing 153 convicts.
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Conflicts continued until August 19th, when hundreds of the workers were arrested for FREEING SLAVES and protecting their basic rights as workers. Many arrested managed to flee, and as a result of the war the Convict Leasing system in Tennessee ended in 1896. Only one of the 300 arrested put to trial was sent to jail, for spreading anarchist thought. The Governer failed to win re-election. -
It should come as no surprise that most public outrage over the system of convict leasing came when it directly affected white people. Martin Tabert was arrested after boarding a train in Florida, in January 1922. Tabert was sent money to pay off his bail, 75 dollars. The police returned it to his parents, unopened. Tabert had died whilst leased out to Putnam Lumber Co. Tabert died after being whipped 150 times. Coverage of Tabert’s death eventually lead to the outlawing of Convict Leasing in FL -
Employers of African Americans were encouraged to fire their workers so they would be considered as “Vagrants” and be viable for arrest. The idea was that employing them encouraged vagrancy, a clear contradiction that was still used to justify the law. Vagrancy laws were justified on fears of southern cities being swamped with “Idle people” and “Vagabonds”, which are clear dog whistles for African Americans.
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The extent to which “vagrancy” came to be euphamistic for being black can be seen in this quote from Assistant Commisioner of New Orleans, Thomas Conway. "to arrest as vagrants all colored laborers who were found on the streets in their working garments, and not employed just at the moment when the police saw them.". It is clearly outlined here that a vagrant is not a homeless person, nor is it someone unemployed. In the eyes of the law, vagrancy is the crime of being African American.