Slavery by Another Name (16 page)

Alabama.

After the war, Flowers purchased a half interest in Milner's

timber operation. The partnership, Milner, Caldwel & Flowers

Lumber Co., built a state-of-the-art sawmil and came to control

tens of thousands of acres of prime forestland. From the 1880s

through the turn of the century, the company relied on thousands of

convict laborers leased from counties and the state of Alabama to

produce vast quantities of turpentine and mil ions of linear feet of

cut lumber and crossties.

In the spring of 1883, Milner was made an o er by the

entrepreneur behind an ambitious railroad under construction from

Atlanta. Milner quickly sold to the Georgia Paci c Railroad part of

his Coalburg mine operation and, in an overtly il egal aspect of the

transaction, a lot of one hundred black convicts. The buyer of both

the mine and the forced laborers was Capt. James W. English, a

powerful Atlanta politician who also headed Chat ahoochee Brick

Company in Atlanta, the biggest and arguably most abusive buyer

of forced laborers in Georgia.

In 1883, Alabama's prison inspector, Reginald Dawson, began to

visit prisons populated with men convicted of state crimes, and a

commission of the state legislature undertook an investigation to

ensure that the prisoners were being humanely treated. The moves

were made not out of humanitarian concerns but as acts of

preservation for the system. In some other states, notably Tennessee,

public criticism of barbaric conditions among prison laborers had

threatened the entire practice of convict leasing. In Alabama, the

system was already proving uniquely wel suited to the needs of

mine owners, coke oven operators, foundries, and lumber and

turpentine camps. The men in charge were commit ed to preserving

the system against any criticism.

Shortly before Milner's transaction outing the laws that

Shortly before Milner's transaction outing the laws that

super cial y governed Alabama's prison mines, Dawson became

"chief inspector" of the state Board of Inspectors of Convicts. He was

a South Carolina native, born in 1838 to an il ustrious lawyer and

planter father. The family moved to Dal as County, Alabama, in

1842, and Dawson studied to become an at orney. A lieutenant in

an Alabama infantry regiment during the war, he was wounded and

came home in 1864.26

Dawson distinguished himself as one among a smal number of

southerners who were troubled by the obvious contradictions

between the convict leasing laws and the realities of the forced

labor system that it spawned. He repeatedly gave o cials an

unvarnished assessment of the situation, apparently in the sincere

belief that with ful exposure, the apparatus of Alabama's tra c in

African Americans could be reformed.

After becoming chief convict inspector, Dawson visited prison

encampments scat ered across the state. In addition to examining

the destinations of state convicts, a law passed the previous year

also al owed state o cials to inspect the larger, but even less

regulated, county convict system. An early stop was at J. W. Comer's

plantation in Barbour County. Dawson described the men held

there on misdemeanor charges in a desperate condition, poorly

clothed and fed, and "unnecessarily chained and shackled."27

At the Prat Mines, then also under the management of Comer

and his business partner, Wil iam McCurdy Dawson observed

extremely high death rates. He termed conditions at two drift mines

as having "miserable accommodations, un t for men to be kept

in."28 Like Comer, McCurdy was a south Alabama man with a long

track record, rst in slaves, then in convicts, on his Lowndes County

farm. On McCurdy's plantation in Lowndes County, seventy black

convicts leased from the state and an unknown number of county

prisoners were held in two pens cal ed the upper and lower cel s.29

The farm would operate with forced laborers for at least fty

years.30

Despite the conditions and the appal ing number of maimed and

Despite the conditions and the appal ing number of maimed and

"disabled men" that Dawson found at the mines operated by Comer,

Milner, and the other forced labor entrepreneurs in 1883, there was

lit le he could do. Comer and McCurdy, as wel as the Prat Mines,

held binding contracts under which the corporations had e ective

ownership of two hundred prisoners each.

Dawson wrote repeatedly in his diary during the hot summer of

that year that he was "stronger than ever in the conviction that the

convicts should not be worked in the mines."31 The inspector also

began to write country judges across Alabama urging them to cease

the transfer of local prisoners to the desperate mines near

Birmingham. Dozens received such let ers, including one on

September 10, 1883, to Simon O’Neal reporting that prisoners at

the Prat Mines "are not wel clothed." He added: "I think the work

required of some of the convicts is excessive." Two weeks later,

Daw-son wrote R. A. J. Cumlie: "The appal ing amt of deaths that

have occurred at the mines, both from disease and accidents, the

great number of cripples, the men broken down by disease to be

found there should convince the public that they should not be

forced to incur the augers incident to this sort of work."32

After Dawson inquired into the circumstances of a convict from

Lee County being held by Comer and McCurdy at one camp, the

inspector realized that although the man had been in custody since

1875—eight years— he wasn't listed in o cial records as a

prisoner. Comer "never reported him," Dawson wrote to the Lee

County judge. "Comer and McCurdy have had him near two years….

You have no idea how many such cases I have worked up."

Dawson appealed to Governor Edward A. O’Neal for help.

"Convicts have been hired out and lost sight of, others are in

possession of contractors and no bond or contract on le. Others

have been found in possession of parties di erent from those to

whom hired."33

Dawson's pleas had lit le e ect. By March 1883, twenty-nine

counties were leasing their prisoners to mines. Altogether, in excess

counties were leasing their prisoners to mines. Altogether, in excess

of four hundred such men were being forced into labor, the vast

majority of them because of their inability to pay nes imposed for

minor or spurious of enses.34

Similarly, Dawson discovered multiple county prisoners at the

Newcastle and Coalburg prison mines owned by Milner who had

never been paid for by the company and were never listed on the

rol s of prisoners that Milner was required by law to maintain. The

bene t of never showing a prisoner on the o cial registers of

convicts was tremendous. The company holding him could ignore

its obligation to make monthly payments to the county of the

prisoner's arrest. Far more ominously, the prisoner could be held

inde nitely. The end e ect, by almost any de nition, was to reduce

the convict to a slave. After a visit to Coalburg in July 1885,

Dawson wrote in his diary: "Stil a great deal of sickness. There is

much dissatisfaction and complaints here. The convicts are

demoralized and the management is bad."35

Dawson could never determine how many such cases occurred.

He wrote that his investigation never truly "probed to the bot om."

Even inspectors such as Dawson rarely considered an even more

troubling dimension of the system: that much larger numbers of the

prisoners—whether listed on the o cial registers or not—had

commit ed no real crime.36

A woman named Annie Tucker was convicted of a misdemeanor

and sold into the Prat Mines in 1883. She later testi ed during a

legislative inquiry that she "cooked, washed and ironed at mines."37

At some point that year, P. J. Rogers, an o cial at the prison who

later became sheri of Je erson County, so severely whipped

Tucker that the Board of Inspectors censured him. Dawson wrote in

his diary that Tucker "ran away from Mr. McCurdy's house—was

caught and carried to the prison. Col. Bank-head whipped her

himself—not severely—After he left, by order of Mr. McCurdy, P. J.

Rogers stripped her, had her held down, and in icted 56 lashes

upon her with a heavy strap."38

After a meeting on November 14, 1883, with two white men

After a meeting on November 14, 1883, with two white men

who had recently visited Comer's Prat Mines, Dawson wrote in his

personal diary: "Disgusted with what they found at shaft—men

eating out of coal shovels. Noti ed Col. Ensley to furnish men

things to eat out of—and other necessaries—Reported to Governor

the neglect of sick men …and also cruelty."

A week later Dawson visited the Shaft mine himself. "Found

things not at al improved—men lousy, lthy and dirty Had no

change for near two months—beds scarce and dirty. One very sick

man in a cel in a miserable condition."39

The plantation operations of J. W. Comer were no bet er. After a

visit to the Comer farm in Barbour County, Dawson wrote: "Things

in bad order. No replace in cel . No arrangements for washing …

no hospital. Everything lthy—privy terrible—convicts ragged—

many barefooted— very heavily ironed."40

Elected o cials responded by adopting new rules governing the

leasing of convicts. Companies that acquired forced laborers were

mandated to provide "clean quarters" and adequate food. Guards

were prohibited from using "cruel" or "excessive punishment." The

new rules also dictated that if the body of a dead prisoner was not

taken by a family member, the company was responsible for an

orderly internment.41

Except for the requirements of racial separation, operators of the

slave labor camps roundly ignored the rules. Between 1882 and the

end of 1883, the number of convicts in the Prat Mines increased

from ninety-two state prisoners and an unknown number of county

convicts to more than ve hundred slave laborers in its Slope and

Shaft mines, about half its total workforce.42 One of Dawson's

deputies wrote him in December 1883 that conditions at the Prat

Mines were severely deteriorating. "Most of the Negroes have not

had a change of clothing in from three to nine weeks and are as

lousy as they can be," wrote Albert T. Henley, citing "the lthy

condition of things."43

In 1884, Archey stil imprisoned at the Eureka mine, wrote to

In 1884, Archey stil imprisoned at the Eureka mine, wrote to

Dawson decrying the treatment he and other black men continued

to receive. "Comer is a hard man. I have seen men come to him

with their shirts a solid scab on their back and beg him to help

them and he would say let the hide grow back and take if o again.

I have seen him hit men 100 and 160 [times] with a ten prong

strop, then say they was not whiped. He would go o after an

escape man come one day with him and dig his grave the same day.

"We go to cel wet, go to bed wet and arise wet the fol owing

morning and evry guard knocking beating yel ing Keep in line

Jumping Ditches," Archey wrote.44

In 1885, when Dawson personal y appealed to Milner to unchain

his permanently shackled laborers at the Newcastle mines for some

portion of each day or night, Milner reacted contemptuously. "My

best and longest mine men," Milner wrote back, "wil get away &

then ruin my business here."45

For its part, Shelby County, though home to some of Alabama's

most glaringly abusive slave mines, moved cautiously, reconsidering

each year whether to partake in the profits of ered by the new trade

in laborers or to stick with working prisoners on the muddy country

roads and col apsing bridges across the county. On December 13,

1880, the county commission split the di erence, ordering that

prisoners convicted of crimes in the fol owing year be hired to an

outside labor agent, but that the men be "employed on public

works." The labor agent was the firm of Comer & McCurdy

The requirement for prisoners to be used on the public roads was

only temporary, however. Late in 1881, the commissioners

authorized the probate judge to hire local convicts to "a farm, coal

mine or Iron works," with the nearby Shelby Iron Works production

facility or Comer's Eureka mines obviously in mind. Immediately