The 13th Amendment
“So many aspects of the old Jim Crow are suddenly legal again once you’ve been branded a felon. And so it seems that in America we haven’t so much ended racial caste, but simply redesigned it.”
Hi Friends!
Welcome to Issue 23 of this newsletter. Today’s topic is The 13th Amendment. I’ve spoken about the 13th amendment in my newsletters on The Prison Industrial Complex, Prison Reform: Week 1 and Prison Reform: Week 2. The 13th amendment to the Constitution made slavery illegal while repackaging it into a different form. The prison system in America is vile, exploitative and inhumane. I feel overwhelmed by fear to merely do a google image search of prison conditions in America, and yet, we disappear human beings into those conditions every single day. America has 5% of the world’s population but nearly 25% of its incarcerated population. (EJI) 1 in 17 white men are likely to go to prison in their lifetime, while 1 in 3 Black men receive imprisonment. Black men account for roughly 6.5% of the US population, but 40.2% of the prison population. Why is this? We can trace it back to the 13th amendment. Let’s get into it!
Key Terms
The Abolition Amendment: A joint resolution introduced by Democrats that would remove the "punishment" clause from the amendment, which effectively allows members of prison populations to be used as cheap and free labor.
Prison Labor: Prison labor, or penal labor, is work that is performed by incarcerated and detained people. Not all prison labor is forced labor, but the setting involves unique modern slavery risks because of its inherent power imbalance and because those incarcerated have few avenues to challenge abuses. The minimum estimated annual value of incarcerated labor from U.S. prisons and jails is $2 billion, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. As recently as 2010, a federal court held that “prisoners have no enforceable right to be paid for their work under the Constitution.”
The Black Codes: Restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. These were new laws that explicitly applied only to Black people immediately after the 13th amendment was passed and and subjected them to criminal prosecution for “offenses” such as loitering, breaking curfew, vagrancy, having weapons, and not carrying proof of employment. Crafted to ensnare Black people and return them to chains, these laws were effective; for the first time in U.S. history, many state penal systems held more Black prisoners than white.
The Prison Industrial Complex: A term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems. This term is derived from the "military–industrial complex" of the 1950s and describes the attribution of the rapid expansion of the US inmate population to the political influence of private prison companies and businesses that supply goods and services to government prison agencies for profit.
Let’s Get Into It
“Neither Slavery Nor Involuntary Servitude, Except As A Punishment For Crime Whereof The Party Shall Have Been Duly Convicted, Shall Exist Within The United States, Or Any Place Subject To Their Jurisdiction.”
A Brief History
Chattel slavery existed in the United States from its founding in 1776 until the passing of the 13th amendment in 1865 (not really but, that’s the whole point of this blog post so just bare with me).
Our founding fathers—George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and Patrick Henry were all slave-owners. 12 former presidents owned slaves, with 8 of them still owning human beings while in office.
By 1861, during the Civil War, more than 4 million people were enslaved in 15 southern and border states.
Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, which took effect in 1863, announced that all enslaved people held in the states “then in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free.” The Emancipation Proclamation it itself did not end slavery in the United States, as it only applied to the 11 Confederate states then at war against the Union. To make emancipation permanent would take a constitutional amendment.
On January 31, 1865, the House of Representatives passed the proposed amendment with a vote of 119-56, just over the required two-thirds majority.
In late 1865, Mississippi and South Carolina enacted the first black codes. The Black Codes were restrictive laws designed to limit the freedom of African Americans and ensure their availability as a cheap labor force after slavery was abolished during the Civil War. Black codes varied from state to state. In South Carolina, one of these laws prohibited Black people from holding any occupation other than farmer or servant unless they paid an annual tax of $10 to $100. Mississippi’s law required Black people to have written evidence of employment for the coming year each January; if they left before the end of the contract, they would be forced to forfeit earlier wages and were subject to arrest. Black codes were also laws that made things like stealing something over $10 while being Black the equivalent of grand larceny. It made loitering or talking back to a white person grounds for imprisonment. In the years following Reconstruction, the South reestablished many of the provisions of the black codes in the form of the so-called "Jim Crow Laws."
The year after the amendment’s passage, Congress passed the nation’s first civil rights bill, the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 declared all male persons born in the United States to be citizens, "without distinction of race or color, or previous condition of slavery or involuntary servitude." This tried to invalidate black codes, but many were repackaged into Jim Crow Laws.
After Reconstruction, for the first time in U.S. history, many state penal systems held more Black prisoners than white. Black codes made it very easy to imprison someone for an offense like not showing proper respect to a white person. States put prisoners to work through a practice called “convict-leasing,” where white planters and industrialists “leased” prisoners to work for them. Chain gangs of predominantly Black prisoners built many of today’s roads and farmed the land. Prisoners were not paid. Many Black prisoners found themselves living and working on plantations (that had been turned into prisons) against their will and for no pay decades after the Civil War.
Today, states and private companies still rely on prisoners performing free or extremely low-paid labor for them. For example, California saves up to $100 million a year, according to state corrections spokesman Bill Sessa, by recruiting incarcerated people as volunteer firefighters. The minimum estimated annual value of incarcerated labor from U.S. prisons and jails is $2 billion, according to the nonprofit Prison Policy Initiative. As recently as 2010, a federal court held that “prisoners have no enforceable right to be paid for their work under the Constitution.”
Ratifying the 13th Amendment
The Abolition Amendment is joint resolution introduced by Democrats that would remove the "punishment" clause from the amendment, which effectively allows members of prison populations to be used as cheap and free labor.
States like Nebraska, Utah and Colorado have approved an amendment to remove language on the use of slavery as a punishment for convicted criminals. The passage of the measure will amend Section 21 of Article I of the Utah Constitution, removing language that disallowed slavery "except as a punishment for crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted." This makes prison labor voluntary.
Currently, OSCA’s (Occupational Safety Councils Of America) standards do not protect prison laborers, so if prisoners are forced to work in unsafe or dangerous situations, like working with toxic chemicals, they are not protected.
Learn more in this podcast: Closing the 13th Amendment Loophole, The Brian Lehrer Show WNYC
Resources
Sign This Petition From EJI - Sign this petition from the Equal Justice Initiative and call on Congress to amend the Thirteenth Amendment to make all slavery and involuntary servitude unconstitutional in the United States, without exception.
Watch 13th
13th is potentially the most impactful film I’ve ever watched on the topic of systemic racism. This comprehensive documentary explores the intersection of race, justice, and mass incarceration in the United States. DuVernay contends that slavery has been perpetuated since the end of the American Civil War through criminalizing behavior and enabling police to arrest poor freedmen and force them to work for the state under convict leasing; suppression of African Americans by disenfranchisement, lynchings, and Jim Crow; politicians declaring a war on drugs that weighs more heavily on minority communities and, by the late 20th century, mass incarceration affecting communities of color, especially American descendants of slavery, in the United States. Watch it for free on YouTube, or on netflix.
Next week, I’m going to be focusing on Black American Sign Language. I came across this topic recently and am so excited to learn more about BASL and how I can be an ally to those that use sign language. See ya there!
