Legacy

The Convict Leasing system is an example of manifested issues within a deeply flawed arrangement of governance. The ability for South Carolinians to implement the unsympathetic system of leasing out convicts came about officially after local control was returned to the democratic south in the 1870s. Interestingly enough, the groundwork for the implementation of Convict exploitation was laid in the late 1860s when the South Carolina General Assembly passed an act to establish a state penitentiary. “This new penal system would take control of persons convicted of a crime and sentenced to imprisonment away from the counties and vest it into the state.”[1] This modification of law proves that South Carolinian officials were optimistically prophesying for a system that they could profit from since virtually every county in the state of South Carolina was dwindling in finances.

While the convict lease system ushered in a new level of economic prosperity for South Carolina and other southern governments, its implication had profound effects upon the imprisoned convicts. If convicted of a crime, African Americans would be restrained and, depending upon their sentence, could serve in the penitentiaries of South Carolina for the rest of their lives. These crimes ranged from alleged rape, murder, assault, robbery, and other petty offenses like vagrancy:

“…Vagrancy, the offense of a person not being able to prove at a given moment that he or she is employed, was a new and flimsy concoction dredged up from legal obscurity at the end of the nineteenth century by the state legislatures of Alabama and other southern states. It was capriciously enforced by local sheriffs and constables, adjudicated by mayors and notaries public, recorded haphazardly or not at all in court records, and, most tellingly in a time of massive unemployment among all southern men, was reserved almost exclusively for black men.”[2]

The Clemson College Board of Trustees crafted a system through which use of convict laborers reinforced white views of blackness. The practice was widespread and even performed by northern states. However, several factors distinguished convict leasing in the South, including adopting leasing for a convict population that was almost completely African American.