Page 45 - Middle Georgia State University - Knighted 2019

Soon to follow was a series of laws that varied from state to state, unanimously dubbed
“Black Codes.” Under these new laws, newly freed blacks were forced to be under labor
contracts, which required white judicial approval and white supervision (Ingle 88). Black
Codes consisted of a variety of strict laws, including vagrancy laws, coupled with increased
sentences for both misdemeanor and felony crimes (Ingle 88), (Raza 163). A.E. Raza argues
that “Black Codes served to define criminality by race (162). This connection is evident in
courts’ reluctance to punish white offenders (Lichtenstein, “Twice” 34).

With Black Codes strictly enforced, governments saw an opportunity to profit, while
amending the broken economy and maintaining the social and racial order, with the creation
of convict-leasing (Raza 164). Convict-leasing is the leasing of inmates to private companies.
States rented inmates for a nominal fee to plantation owners and corporations. It was through
convict-leasing that states were able to mitigate cost and responsibility (Lichtenstein, “Twice”
35). Harry Allen adds that counties used convict-leasing as a means to avoid construction and
maintenance cost of prisons (4). In essence, convict-leasing built “the foundation for
governments and private companies to extract labor and profits from inmates” (Raza 166).
Through this exploitation, state governments were relieved of the duty of housing and feeding
convicts, while plantation owners and corporations were able to rent a labor force for less
money than it would cost to pay a free work force.

The Thirteenth Amendment drastically altered the South, yet the reformed penal
system eerily resembled slavery in many of its practices (Gabbidon 119). Black Codes
“recreated involuntary servitude by justifying criminality to be punishable by slavery” via the
convict-lease system (Raza 165). Joseph Ingle corroborates this resemblance when he
describes Black Codes as “a thinly veiled attempt…to maintain slavery without using the

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