Alabama, companies were fined
$150 a head if they al owed a prisoner to escape. For a time, state
law mandated that if a convict got free while being transported to
the mines, the sheri or deputy responsible had to serve out the
prisoner's sentence. Companies often faced their strongest criticism
for al owing black and white prisoners to share the same cel s.
"White convicts and colored convicts shal not be chained together,"
read Alabama law.51
In almost every respect—the acquisition of workers, the lease
arrangements, the responsibilities of the leaseholder to detain and
care for them, the incentives for good behavior—convict leasing
adopted practices almost identical to those emerging in slavery in
the 1850s.
By the late 1870s, the de ning characteristics of the new
involuntary servitude were clearly apparent. It would be obsessed
with ensuring disparate treatment of blacks, who at al times in the
ensuing fty years would constitute the vast majority of those sold
into labor. They were routinely starved and brutalized by
into labor. They were routinely starved and brutalized by
corporations, farmers, government o cials, and smal -town
businessmen intent on achieving the most lucrative balance
between the productivity of captive labor and the cost of sustaining
them. The consequences for African Americans were grim. In the
rst two years that Alabama leased its prisoners, nearly 20 percent
of them died.52 In the fol owing year, mortality rose to 35 percent.
In the fourth, nearly 45 percent were kil ed.53
I I
SLAVERY’S INCREASE
"Day after day we looked Death in the face & was afraid to speak."
Henry and Mary did not wait long to begin their increase.
Cooney, a lit le girl, came to them before the end of another
harvest season had passed.1 The arrival of an infant, even more
so a rst child, to a pair of former slaves in the rst years after
emancipation must have been an event of sublime joy. A young
black family of the early 1870s already knew that the presumptions
of ful freedom that had accompanied the end of slavery were being
gravely chal enged in the South. But surrounding and overwhelming
the anxieties triggered by those obstructions—violence by the Ku
Klux Klan and other paramilitary groups and the machinations of
white political leaders—was the astonishing range of possibilities
now at least theoretical y available to a newly born child.
While Cooney was stil a babe, the northern states by
overwhelming majorities rati ed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
amendments to the Constitution, abolishing with absolute clarity
the institution of slavery as it had existed for the previous 250 years
and granting ful citizenship and voting rights to al black
Americans. A black toddler in central Alabama would learn his rst
words at a time when black men were gathering regularly with
others to elect those who would govern their counties and states.
Cooney was seven years old when the U.S. Congress passed its
rst Civil Rights Act, further guaranteeing the right of African
Americans to vote on the same terms as whites and to live as ful
citizens in the eyes of the law. The new state legislatures of the
South, now including substantial numbers of black Republicans,
passed laws mandating for the rst time in the southern states that
children, whether black or white, be a orded some semblance of
basic education. By 1871, more than 55,000 black children were
at ending public school in Alabama.
at ending public school in Alabama.
Henry and Mary knew there would be trouble, yes, plenty of it.
But the young man and woman, il iterate, provincial, and unskil ed,
had every reason to expect nonetheless that in the expiring of ten or
twenty years, their daughter and the boisterous brood of boys and
girls who would fol ow her would live lives in a world so
transformed from their own as to be ut erly unrecognizable.
By the time Cooney turned two, as Thanksgiving approached
$150 a head if they al owed a prisoner to escape. For a time, state
law mandated that if a convict got free while being transported to
the mines, the sheri or deputy responsible had to serve out the
prisoner's sentence. Companies often faced their strongest criticism
for al owing black and white prisoners to share the same cel s.
"White convicts and colored convicts shal not be chained together,"
read Alabama law.51
In almost every respect—the acquisition of workers, the lease
arrangements, the responsibilities of the leaseholder to detain and
care for them, the incentives for good behavior—convict leasing
adopted practices almost identical to those emerging in slavery in
the 1850s.
By the late 1870s, the de ning characteristics of the new
involuntary servitude were clearly apparent. It would be obsessed
with ensuring disparate treatment of blacks, who at al times in the
ensuing fty years would constitute the vast majority of those sold
into labor. They were routinely starved and brutalized by
into labor. They were routinely starved and brutalized by
corporations, farmers, government o cials, and smal -town
businessmen intent on achieving the most lucrative balance
between the productivity of captive labor and the cost of sustaining
them. The consequences for African Americans were grim. In the
rst two years that Alabama leased its prisoners, nearly 20 percent
of them died.52 In the fol owing year, mortality rose to 35 percent.
In the fourth, nearly 45 percent were kil ed.53
I I
SLAVERY’S INCREASE
"Day after day we looked Death in the face & was afraid to speak."
Henry and Mary did not wait long to begin their increase.
Cooney, a lit le girl, came to them before the end of another
harvest season had passed.1 The arrival of an infant, even more
so a rst child, to a pair of former slaves in the rst years after
emancipation must have been an event of sublime joy. A young
black family of the early 1870s already knew that the presumptions
of ful freedom that had accompanied the end of slavery were being
gravely chal enged in the South. But surrounding and overwhelming
the anxieties triggered by those obstructions—violence by the Ku
Klux Klan and other paramilitary groups and the machinations of
white political leaders—was the astonishing range of possibilities
now at least theoretical y available to a newly born child.
While Cooney was stil a babe, the northern states by
overwhelming majorities rati ed the Fourteenth and Fifteenth
amendments to the Constitution, abolishing with absolute clarity
the institution of slavery as it had existed for the previous 250 years
and granting ful citizenship and voting rights to al black
Americans. A black toddler in central Alabama would learn his rst
words at a time when black men were gathering regularly with
others to elect those who would govern their counties and states.
Cooney was seven years old when the U.S. Congress passed its
rst Civil Rights Act, further guaranteeing the right of African
Americans to vote on the same terms as whites and to live as ful
citizens in the eyes of the law. The new state legislatures of the
South, now including substantial numbers of black Republicans,
passed laws mandating for the rst time in the southern states that
children, whether black or white, be a orded some semblance of
basic education. By 1871, more than 55,000 black children were
at ending public school in Alabama.
at ending public school in Alabama.
Henry and Mary knew there would be trouble, yes, plenty of it.
But the young man and woman, il iterate, provincial, and unskil ed,
had every reason to expect nonetheless that in the expiring of ten or
twenty years, their daughter and the boisterous brood of boys and
girls who would fol ow her would live lives in a world so
transformed from their own as to be ut erly unrecognizable.
By the time Cooney turned two, as Thanksgiving approached
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