Labor as punishment: excavating labor within the southern convict lease system

Abstract

The rebuilding of the US South following the US Civil War was only possible through widespread forced prison labor formalized as part of the Southern convict lease system. The convict lease system cemented an ideological and practical link between incarceration, forced labor, and race as a means to uphold white supremacy and white financial security. However, while the convict lease system resembles prior US iterations of slavery, convict labor acted as a totalizing form of enslavement that departed significantly from those earlier forms. The transition from forced laborers as private property to forced laborers as state property brought with it a host of reconfigurations related to laborers’ identities vis-à-vis capitalist needs. Using a labor framework, this paper explores how laborer identities related to race, gender, and class were reinterpreted within the convict lease system and how those changes manifest in the material record.