When slavery formally ended, Southern states developed systems that allowed prisoners to be leased to private companies.
Black people were disproportionately arrested under discriminatory laws.
One example was laws criminalizing vague offenses such as “vagrancy.”
A Black person could be arrested, fined and if unable to pay they were leased out for labor.
Companies used prisoners in:
• mines
• plantations
• railroads
• factories
• constructions
Conditions could be extremely brutal.
Capitalism taught us to normalize people starving to death just because they have no money. To normalize people dying because they can't buy medicine. To be okay with people missing out on education due to lack of school fees. Capitalism makes people insane.
BOOMER: “Nobody wants to work anymore.”
ME: “The warehouse is hiring at $19 an hour.”
BOOMER: “That’s decent money.”
ME: “Rent is $2,400.”
BOOMER: “Get a roommate. Work weekends. Stop being picky.”
Notice how every solution somehow means the worker has to sacrifice more.
Lower your standards. Share a bedroom. Give up your weekends. Work overtime. Stay broke a little longer.
But somehow the idea that a full time job should actually pay enough to live on never makes the list.
Black people helped build America’s wealth through generations of forced labor. Yet instead of gratitude, we got lynchings, segregation, racism, and denied rights. They took our labor, built their wealth from it, then treated us like a threat when we demanded equality.