The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (November 1912) / Vol. LXXXV: New Series Vol. LXIII, November 1912 to April 1913

by Unknown

CONVICT LABOR A GREAT EVIL IN THE SOUTH

IT would help mightily toward the higher civilization for both races if more white people would apply their religion to the negro in their community, and ask themselves how they would like to be treated if they were in the negro’s place. For example, no white man in America would feel that he was being treated with justice if every time he had a case in court, whether civil or criminal, every member of the jury was of some other race. Yet this is true of the negro in nearly all of the Southern States. There are few white lawyers or judges who will not admit privately that it is almost impossible for a negro to get justice when he has a case against a white man and all the members of the jury are white. In these circumstances, when a negro fails to receive justice, the injury to him is temporary, but the injury to the character of the white man on the jury is permanent.

In Alabama eighty-five per cent. of the convicts are negroes. The official records show that last year Alabama had turned into its treasury $1,085,854 from the labor of its convicts. At least $900,000 of this came from negro convicts, who were for the most part rented to the coal-mining companies in the northern part of the State. The result of this policy has been to get as many able-bodied convicts as possible into the mines, so that contractors might increase their profits. Alabama, of course, is not the only State that has yielded to the temptation to make money out of human misery. The point is, however, that while $900,000 is turned into the State treasury from negro-convict labor, to say nothing of negro taxes, there came out of the State treasury, to pay negro teachers, only $357,585.

I speak of this matter as much in the interest of the white man as of the black. Whenever and wherever the white man, acting as a court officer, feels that he cannot render absolute justice because of public sentiment, that white man is not free. Injustice in the courts makes slaves of two races in the South, the white and the black.