On this day in 1865, the House passed the 13th Amendment to the Constitution abolishing slavery in America. The amendment read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude…shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” The amendment passed 119 to 56, just barely above the necessary two-thirds majority. The amendment was ratified by the requisite number of states due to pressure on some of the ‘reconstructed’ states since the amendment had been rejected by New Jersey, Delaware, Kentucky and Mississippi.
The amendment contained a crucial exception: “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.”
After the end of the Civil War, Many southern states created ‘black codes’ through creation of new types of offenses, especially attitudinal offenses—not showing proper respect, those types of things. New offenses like “malicious mischief” were vague, and could be a felony or misdemeanor depending on the supposed severity of behavior. These laws sent more Black people to prison than ever before, and by the late 19th century the country experienced its first “prison boom.”
States put prisoners to work through a practice called “convict-leasing,” whereby white planters and industrialists “leased” prisoners to work for them. States and private businesses made money doing this, but prisoners didn’t. This meant many Black prisoners found themselves living and working on plantations against their will and for no pay decades after the Civil War.
Like chattel slavery before it, convict-leasing was brutal and inhumane. Across the country, tens of thousands of people, overwhelmingly Black, were leased by the state to plantation owners, privately owned railroad yards, coal mines and road-building chain gangs and made to work under the whip from dawn till dusk—often as punishment for petty crimes such as vagrancy or theft.
Something wrong here…
Uh Oh!!!!
Today is the birthday, in 1954, of Adrian Vandenburg, Dutch guitarist who was a member of Whitesnake who had the 1987 US No.1 & UK No.9 single ‘Here I Go Again’. Also a member of Manic Eden. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyF8RHM1OCg
