Worse Than Slavery
In "Worse than Slavery", David Oshinsky tells a graphic story of the system adopted after the civil war in the south. He explains in detail how conflict labor was used as a form of replacement slavery against the blacks in Mississippi and throughout the south. Convict leasing and the system inside the Parchman farm were both ways in which white southerners used the criminal justice system to maintain power over newly free blacks. Blacks were easily convicted of crimes and sentenced to long terms with harsh punishments. White southerners relied on the criminal justice system in order to preserve the patterns of race relations and to create new patterns. One way in which they did this was to create black codes. The goal of these codes was to control the labor supply and to keep the higher position of whites in southern society. The codes listed certain crimes for the freed blacks only, such as mischief and cruel treatment of animals. The penalty for intermarriage was life imprisonment. Oshinsky explains to us that for blacks accused of any crime it was basically impossible to be acquitted of their charges. They could not afford lawyers and white word always prevailed over blacks. After the end of the Civil War, southerners
"Convict leasing was a system that pitted rich people against poor people, whites against blacks, and ex-masters against former slaves. This was because they were serving sentences of ten years or more, only convicted of the most heinous crimes in the courts of Mississippi. Edmund Richardson, a business man from North Carolina provided an answer in 1868. Its profits would be widely resented and narrowly shared. We learn about convict labor and the ways in which the government backed up the harsh treatment of imprisoned blacks. 159) David Oshinsky told a story of the post civil war south. Some who tried to escape where whipped "till the blood ran down their legs. He had bought land in the Yazoo Delta and needed cheap labor to work the land. In 1876, legislation passed a crime bill that was aimed directly at the blacks. He struck a deal with Mississippi authorities to lease the felons so they could work outside the prison walls. Parchman contained a sawmill, a brick yard, a slaughterhouse, a vegetable canning plant, and two cotton gins. It seemed to be a good way to deal with the increased crime rates until a new prison could be built. 78) For the wealthy white land owners this system was perfect. Vardaman became governor of Mississippi in 1904.
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