Slavery by Another Name (21 page)

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

sheri on November 23, 1891, asking if a black man with the last

name of El iot had perhaps stabbed a man at the Shelby Iron

Works some years earlier. "Look into the mat er and see if there is

any Reward for him, and if so I wil bring him to you and divide

the Reward. I know where he is and can get him anytime. Hoping

to hear from you at your earliest convenience."36

A week later, a telegraph to Grant on November 29, 1891, from

the constable in Waverly Alabama, warned that he had arrested an

African American named Frank Hubbard but "wil not hold unless

there is an ample reward." Scores upon scores of such let ers—some

penned in re ned script of educated men, more often in the scrawl

of county brutes, sometimes crisp and terse telegrams—piled in

heaps in a drawer of the sheri 's wooden desk.37 Scat ered among

them were reminders from Je erson County's Sheri Rogers, who

later became general manager of convicts for the Tennessee Coal,

Iron & Railroad Co., to send along bil s and receipts related to the

transportation of prisoners from Columbiana to the Prat Mines—by

then the ultimate destination of nearly every one of the hundreds of

black men unfortunate enough to encounter Sherif Grant.38

black men unfortunate enough to encounter Sherif Grant.

The opportunities for abuse in these dealings were immense and

obvious. Blacks who fel into the disfavor of white o cials

anywhere in the South could be swept into the penal system on the

most super cial pretense. The ability of blacks to resist these

developments became more and more circumscribed.

The sudden rise of this new threat was shocking to blacks at a time

when thousands stil actively participated in southern political life.

But that too was soon under a new and corrosive at ack. In the

Alabama election of 1892, the political dynamics of the state were

cloaked in what appeared to be a clash of ideals between a new

populist rhetoric aimed at uniting agrarians and laborers against the

"Bourbon" al iance of plantation owners and industrialists who

control ed the Democratic Party—a theme echoing across the South.

The Alabama populists were led by gubernatorial candidate

Reuben Kolb. It was widely believed that his victory in the previous

election had been stolen in 1890, when Democrats stuf ed the bal ot

boxes with thousands of ostensible African American votes in

overwhelmingly black counties. The result had been the fraudulent

but irreversible coronation of Governor Thomas Goode Jones, a

former Confederate who a decade later would play a pivotal role

on the issue of continuing the South's new slavery.

In 1892, both Kolb and Jones ran for the governor's o ce again.

Kolb promised to support crop prices and regulate the abusive

railroad cartels that imposed high freight fees on farm goods being

shipped to market. Philosophical y, he had the support of new

activist black farmer's groups who shared the populist concerns

over laws and practices that abused poor people, sharecroppers,

and tenant farmers. In a nod to black voters, Kolb, the former state

agriculture secretary and a Confederate veteran as wel , also said he

opposed the practice of leasing convicts.

Governor Jones vowed to revive the state by encouraging the

explosive growth of Birmingham and continuing to help wealthy

cot on plantation owners in the state's predominantly black,

cot on plantation owners in the state's predominantly black,

southern counties. Whites were in turmoil over the choice, with

poorer hil country counties breaking for Kolb and whites in the

rich atlands once again supporting Jones. To win reelection, Jones

knew he had to once more pack the voting pol s with thousands of

black Republicans on his side. Despite their shared economic

interests with black sharecroppers and tenants, Kolb's poor-farmer

white fol owers responded to Jones's currying of African American

voters with the most shril white supremacist rhetoric.

Jones's conservative Democrat backers, including the state's major

newspapers, shamelessly turned the tables—accusing Kolb populists

of supporting black political rights and dubbing him the candidate

of the "nigger party." Kolb's supporters reacted with even more

odious anti-black invective. The South was tracing out the lines of

the violent racial ideology and vernacular that would consume it for

the next seventy-five years.

John Milner, the Alabama industrialist who had so aggressively

pushed for the state to adopt laws helping him l his mines with

forced black labor, published a pamphlet denouncing even the

vaguest suggestion of al owing black political rights.

Titled "WHITE MEN OF ALABAMA, STAND TOGETHER!," the

pamphlet blared: "It would be bet er … if left in the control of their

negroes, that Alabama …sink beneath the waves and be forever

lost."39

That was the real substance of the campaign. Most of the

philosophical clash between the two sides was a sham, as the South

was swept by the latest wave of white animosity toward African

Americans. Whites realized that the al ies of blacks in the North

appeared to be abandoning the former slaves. A time had come to

set le scores and relay the foundations for a society based on the

harshest racial divisions. Further inflaming the passions of 1892 was

the Federal Election Bil sponsored by Massachuset s representative

Henry Cabot Lodge. The act, known to opponents as the "Force

Bil ," mandated that black voting rights be protected in the South

through federal supervision of elections. Two years earlier, the

through federal supervision of elections. Two years earlier, the

measure was approved by the House of Representatives but failed

in the Senate. The new version raised the sensational specter of

reintroducing federal troops in the southern states to force

compliance.

In reality, the Force Bil was the last gasp of the dwindling

numbers of Civil War-era Republican idealists in Washington to

compel adherence to the mandates of the constitutional

amendments granting citizenship to African Americans. The

measure was doomed from introduction. But its consideration left