2 chapters across the catalog
Noam Chomsky explains how slavery was reinstituted in a more brutal form after 1877 through the criminalization of black life for minor offenses like vagrancy. This "convict leasing" system provided cheap labor for mines and railroads, fueling American industrialization. The hosts note that this system was often deadlier than traditional slavery because the "owners" had no financial stake in the laborers' survival.
The 13th Amendment's loophole allowing slavery as punishment for a crime led to the evolution of the institution through convict leasing and mass incarceration. A Vice documentary clip features Arthur Miller, whose family was held in de facto slavery on a Mississippi plantation until 1961. The segment details the extreme violence used to maintain this system, including accounts of Black men being forced to dig their own graves and being castrated for attempting to leave plantations well into the mid-20th century.
