Tag: Convict Lease System

Hellraisers Journal: Mrs. Frederick Douglass Speaks on Evils of Convict Lease System at Buffalo Convention of N. A. C. W.

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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WEB DuBois quote 1901, Slavery Convict Lease—————

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 13, 1901
Mrs. Douglass Speaks at Buffalo Convention of National Assoc. of Colored Women

From The Buffalo Review of July 12, 1901:

Convict Lease System.

Helen Pitts Douglass 1838-1903, wiki

There was a larger attendance at last night’s session than at any time during the convention [of the National Association of Colored Women]. After vocal music by a local musical club, the president, Mrs. Terrell, introduced the chief speaker of the evening, Mrs. Frederick Douglas, widow of the man who espoused the negro’s cause so earnestly during his life time. Mrs. Douglas has gone deep into the study of the convict lease system of the South, and it was of that she spoke last night.

She explained why the system came to be adopted. After the war, she said, many of the Southern cities had no penitentiaries and they had many prisoners, sentenced for small or great offenses. They were leased to companies whose only interest was to wring every cent possible out of their labor. Mrs. Douglas said it has been proved that in the State of Alabama the death rate in the convict camps is 41 out of 100, annually, and at one investigation only three prisoners were found to have survived an eight-year sentence and not one lived to complete a ten-year imprisonment.

She spoke of the conditions in the convict camps in Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and other states where the greatest cruelty is practised on the prisoners, the large majority of whom are negroes. Boys, women and men are chained together in gangs and the utmost immortality prevails among them. Mrs. Douglas said the cruelty of the punishments inflicted on the prisoners equals that of inquisition times, the disease and filth that abounds in the camps are beyond description.

The National Association of Colored Women is seeking to arouse the people of the United States to the enormity of the evil of the lease system. The women feel they are powerless to stop the evil but they are anxious to enlist the help of all right-minded Americans…..

[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]

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Hellraisers Journal: Eugene Debs Speaks at Delmonico’s in New York City to Club of Wealthy Men on Perils of Prison Labor

Janet RayeEugene Victor Debs
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Quote EVD Prison Labor, NYC, Mar 21, 1899———-

Hellraisers Journal – Saturday March 25, 1899
New York, New York – Eugene Debs Speaks on Prison Labor

On Tuesday March 21st, Comrade Eugene Debs came before the wealthy members of the Nineteenth Century Club at Delmonico’s to lecture them on the evils of prison labor. The Indianapolis Journal quotes the speech in part; the full speech can viewed below.

From The Indianapolis Journal of March 22, 1899:

DEBS ON PRISON LABOR.
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Terre Haute Agitator Talks to Business,
Professional and Scientific Men.
—–

Great Annual Convict Sale Florida Crpd, SF Call, Jan 30, 1898
San Francisco Call – January 30, 1898

NEW YORK, March 21.-About 230 members of the Nineteenth Century Club gathered at the ballroom of Delmonico’s tonight to listen to an address to the organization by Eugene V. Debs, the labor agitator. There were a number of substantial business, professional and scientific men present. The interest in Mr. Debs’s words was rather out of the ordinary and the speaker was applauded mildly several times during his remarks. Mr. Debs spoke on “Prison Labor, Its Effects on Industry and Trade.” Among other things Mr. Debs said:

Here in this proud city, where wealth has built its monuments, grander and more imposing than any of the seven wonders of the world named in classic lore, if you will excavate for facts you will find the remains, the bones of toilers buried and imbedded in the foundations. They lived, they wrought, they died. In their time they may have laughed and sung and danced to the music of their clanking chains. They married, propagated their species and perpetuated conditions, which, growing steadily worse, are to-day the foulest blots the imagination can conceive upon our much vaunted civilization, and from these conditions there flow a thousand streams of vice and crime which have broadened and deepened until they constitute a perpetual and ever increasing menace to the peace and security of society. Jails, workhouses, reformatories and penitentiaries have been crowded with the victims, and the question how to control these institutions and the unfortunate inmates is challenging the most serious thought of the most advanced nations on the globe.

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Hellraisers Journal: Men, Women, and Children Sold to Highest Bidder at Auction in West Palm Beach, Florida

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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There are no limits to which
powers of privilege will not go
to keep the workers in slavery.
-Mother Jones
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Hellraisers Journal, Sunday January 23, 1898
West Palm Beach, Florida – On Sale:  Men, Women, and Children 

From The San Francisco Call of January 7, 1898:

Convicts Sold as Slaves in Florida, SF Call, Jan 7, 1898

 

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Hellraisers Journal: From the Duluth Labor World: “Women Convicts Sold,” Dark Age Practice Persists in Alabama

Janet RayeHellraisers Journal
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WEB DuBois quote 1901, Slavery Convict Lease

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Hellraisers Journal, Wednesday December 26, 1917
Birmingham, Alabama – Women Convicts Sold for 15 Cents a Day

`
From the Duluth Labor World of December 22, 1917:

WOMEN CONVICTS BEING SOLD
FOR 15 CENTS A DAY
—–
Vicious Practice of the Dark Ages
Still Obtains in Alabama.
—–

Clarissa Olds Keeler, Convict Lease System, 1907

BIRMINGHAM, Ala., Dec. 20.— Women convicts in this state are sold to contractors for 15 cents a day and are housed in filthy stockades while candidates for the governorship talk of the “gradual” removal of this glaring evil, declares the Monthly Bulletin of the Alabama state federation of labor.

This publication says:

Under a recent date line, Escambia county, state of Alabama, rises to remark that Escambia county has made a most advantageous contract with a certain employing concern, where the county has leased its women convicts for two years for the munificent sum of 15 cents per day. Such things make us wonder if we are still in the dark ages, with all the blind ignorance of human instincts, with all the intollerant cruelty of the old savage slave dealer and buyer, and this happened in the enlightened state of Alabama. Women, sold into slavery to the highest bidder, to do whatever that bidder desires; work, slave, toil through the days; rest in stockades, filthy and unfit, for the nights; truly a picture upon which every Alabamian should look with pride; and candidates for the governorship favor the “gradual” removal of convicted persons from the mines and lumber camps.

For years and years labor has fought this system of slavery in the state. Governors have promised to abolish it, legislatures have promised to abolish it; the people have demanded its abolishment, but when it comes to weighing the human soul against the almighty dollar the dollar wins every time. Poor, indeed, must be that state which has to sell its legal slaves into involuntary servitude that it may use the revenue thus obtained to pay its teachers, to pay its officers, to pay its expenses in other ways, to pay the jurors who send the unfortunates to the mines; to pay the judges who pronounce sentence.

And not a man offers for office in the state but who will wink at this inhuman traffic in human souls; not one of them will come out flatly for the abolition of this traffic.

[Photograph added of “Crime of Crimes” by Clarissa Olds Keeler.]

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