Historical Context

The reason that the South Carolina General Assembly officially gave for moving the responsibility of convicts to the state was that crimes are committed against the laws of the state and not against those of the counties. The first contract for the leasing of convicts in South Carolina, after approval of the act by the state General Assembly on June 8, 1877, commenced “when the board of directors of the penitentiary let 100 convicts to the Greenwood & Augusta railroad, then in the course of construction, which was to make payment in cash on February 1, 1878, for their labor.”[1]

Determined in 1877, the policy of the state of South Carolina toward its convicts would change for years to come. On April 26^th, 1877, J. Walter Gray, a representative from Greenville, asked and obtained leave to introduce in the house of representatives a bill “to utilize the convict labor of this State.” The bill was passed, and the act approved on June 8, 1877.[2] It explicitly details the following:

SEC. 4. The said Board of Directors are hereby authorized and empowered to lease or hire out upon such terms and conditions as they may think most advantageous to the State, and that will secure the health and confinement of the prisoners, any or all other convicts in the Penitentiary, except the convicts under sentence for murder, rape, arson and manslaughter, under the following rules, regulations and restrictions, with all others imposed by the said Board.[3]

This act further discusses stipulations centered around the ways in which convicts were to be managed. All convicts leased, for instance, were to be kept within the state of South Carolina and treated humanely. The written contracts also included the stated stipulations. For instance, a contract for plantation labor would detail things like “the kind of food, clothing, lodging, modes of punishment to be enacted, and information explaining the convicts were not to be worked more than 10 hours a day.”[4]

Many of the contracts with the SC Penitentiary were agreements with southern white males who proclaimed loyalty to the traditions and practices of states’ rights. Therefore, contracts were written carefully and lucidly as it was crucial to the creators of the Convict System to not have violence at the forefront of the arrangement since the federal government could shut down the institution at any time. But Southern officials knew that abuse of requirements would take place. Victims of the convict lease system, like their enslaved ancestors, were sturdy able-bodied blacks whose labor was more valuable than their lives. Thousands of African Americans, upon false conviction and imprisonment, were the selective labor force utilized within this appalling system.

Changes through the years were made to the convict act. Fundamentally, each ratified revision only prolonged the convict lease system:

          An act to regulate labor of persons confined in the penitentiary of the state of South Carolina, states that convicts were to be employed on work of the state alone.[5]

          An act to reduce and fix the price of dieting prisoners said the cost of prisoners’ diet was not to exceed thirty cents per diem.[6]

          An act to amend an act entitled ‘an act to utilize the convict labor of the state’ ruled that convicts may be used for agricultural purposes.[7]

          An act to amend an act entitled ‘an act to utilize the convict labor of this state,’ approved March 1, 1878, ruled that convicts would be hired to the highest bidding party.[8]

         An act to amend an act entitled ‘an act to utilize the convict labor of the state, ruled that all convicts must be recalled if found mistreated and that “in order to secure the intent of this act, it is the duty of the superintendent of the penitentiary to cause the convicts furnished under the provisions of the act to be inspected by a physician at least once a month.”[9]

Realizing that a way of life, similar to when the institution of slavery was in operation, was no longer achievable, white plantation owners set about finding ways to add more people to their already stable labor force of convicts. They calculated that a task such as this would be best completed through exploiting the power of Black Code legislation––most notably the statute of vagrancy. Vagrancy and idleness were considered public grievances and could be punishable as crimes. Examples include:

All persons who had not some fixed and known place of abode; those who had not some lawful employment and visible means of an honest and reputable livelihood; those who wondered from place to place, vending, bartering, or peddling any commodities without a license; all common gamblers; persons who led idle or disorderly lives; those who, not having sufficient means of support, were able to work and did not work; those who did not provide a reasonable and proper maintenance for themselves and families; those who were engaged in representing publically or privately and theatrical or musical performance or similar amusement for fee and reward, without a license, fortune-tellers; sturdy beggars; common drunkards; those who hunted game of any description, or fished on the land of others or frequented the premises, contrary to the will of the occupants, were deemed to be vagrants.[10]

Some scholars argue that the leasing of convicts was honorable and successful in its endeavors. Andrew Duncan, for instance, goes so far as to claim that “the objectives of convict leasing were perfectly reasonable: to provide convicts with some form of appropriate daily occupation; to shift the economic burden of feeding, housing, and clothing them to a third party; and, to earn money from their labor to offset the cost of maintaining and running the state penitentiary.”[11] Obviously, the listed points were not positive as there are countless existing personal and statistical accounts of maltreatment within the penitentiaries that convicts were housed in, and within the companies that convicts were leased out to. The strongly destructive atmosphere that convict labor inflicted upon thousands of African Americans is truly disheartening.

The penal labor that convicts completed was common practice in the state of South Carolina. As described in One Dies, Get Another, author Matthew Mancini offers feedback as to how the chain gang was directly reminiscent to that of slavery since “work gangs achieved their high-efficiency levels by means of a cruel, assembly-line pace.”[12] Corruption, lack of accountability, widespread miseducation, and racial violence all resulted in unconceivable conditions in the type of work that convicts completed. The most popular forms of labor completed were mine, farm, and railway work. Author Yaa Gyasi, in her novel Homegoing, offers an excellent illustration of what convicts faced through narrating the story of H. H was wrongfully convicted of a crime and sentenced to hard labor in the American South. He describes his work in the coal mines as vast and difficult, being that he “spent hours, whole days, on his knees. By the end of the first month, the shovel felt like an extension of his arm, and indeed, his back had begun to ripple around the shoulder blades, growing, it seemed, to accommodate the new weight.”[13] H’s story continues to include vivid depictions of the crowded, damp, and harsh conditions within the mines. “H shoveled some fourteen thousand pounds of coal, all while stooped down low, on his knees, stomach, and sides. And when he and the other prisoners left the mines, they would always be coated in a layer of black dust, their arms burning, just burning.”[14] Despite the provision in the act passed in June of 1877, detailing how convicts were not to be punished and overworked, the most common and severe modes of punishment were extra-long work hours and whippings. Compared with other states, South Carolina had relatively few reported episodes of abuse. Unfortunately, though, the state had one of the worst.[15]

At the end of every workday, convicts left their assigned work posts and traveled to one of two places, camps or the penitentiary. The chief function of the camp was to “house the labor force at the margins of the state’s populated areas, but at important points of its economy – its forests, farms, and nascent railroad lines.”[16] Essentially, convicts that were housed in camps were to be contained in areas not common to the public but close enough to their workspaces. This is why convict work was so popular on plantations and the like because, at these residences, the land available was expansive. “Certain camps housed as few as a single squad of ten men, while others were full-fledged penitentiary-stockades where several hundred prisoners lived, slept, and ate.”[17] Often times, there was not enough clothing to go around, causing many convicts to never change their clothes. A few of the camps literally moved on wheels as they were rolling cages that followed the companies of their employ.

Sanitation in the camps proved to be unnerving. In August of 1879, one inspector reported that “he found nine sick men chained to a poor excuse for a straw bed ‘in deplorable condition,’ and in the ‘so-called hospital,’ he found another three men – two white one black – all chained and ‘covered with vermin and fleas.”[18] Dr. Trezvant, a medical inspector, described the poor hospital conditions by stating that “the English language does not possess words sufficiently strong to express the stench that arose from that place.”[19]

The convict lease system had profound effects on imprisoned convicts. Once convicted, African Americans would be restrained and, depending upon their sentence, could serve in the penitentiaries of South Carolina for the rest of their lives. The practice was widespread and even performed by northern states. In the end, the advancement of South Carolina’s economic conditions in the 1890s ended the system of Convict Leasing. Unfortunately, the system as a whole continued on into the late 1940s and affected African American women and children as well.