On This Day In Alabama History: Convict Leasing Ended In Alabama

By Alabama NewsCenter Staff

June 30, 1928

The origins of Alabama’s horrific convict-leasing system predated the Civil War. But it was in 1875, during a state fiscal crisis, that the state embraced convict leasing as a source of revenue. It was quickly adopted by counties across the state, creating a form of government-sanctioned neo-slavery in which blacks were arrested by authorities on questionable or completely bogus charges and then leased to private industry as laborers. While the system provided revenue for government, the cost of the labor was so low that convicts became essentially disposable and were often worked to death in deplorable conditions in mines, quarries, lumberyard and farms, only to be replaced by more convict laborers. By the latter part of the 19th century, almost all leased convicts were being sent to large mine operators that built prisons on-site to house them. In 1911, an explosion at the Banner Mine in Jefferson County killed 123 African-American county prisoners, increasing calls to end the system.  Alabama was the last state in the nation to halt convict leasing, a full five years after Florida.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama and PBS. For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.

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