Wow, in the 1880s inmate leasing accounted for three-quarters of the Alabama's state revenue! That definitely would create an incentive to imprison as many people as possible. I can understand the outrage. I'm very interested in learning more about this. My grandmother's family (the one she told everyone she didn't have) lived right in that area, near Virginia Mine, just south of Wegra.
And yeah...John knew how to work it, didn't he? To be fair, two years of hard labor in a mine for an 84-year-old seems pretty harsh for violating a liquor law. I wonder if sentences became more severe across the board for all offenses during the time of high profiting from convicts.
It’s a fascinating and disturbing topic and one that goes deep into all the darkness of the past - slavery, reconstruction, the KKK, Jim Crow laws. I came across so many just horrific accounts of what life was like for the convicts, 90+ percent of whom were poor Blacks, often sent to the mines for minor crimes like vagrancy, and then kept there due to the exaggerated court fees they were required to repay. And greed. Don’t forget greed, which was equally to blame, in so many ways.
Wow, in the 1880s inmate leasing accounted for three-quarters of the Alabama's state revenue! That definitely would create an incentive to imprison as many people as possible. I can understand the outrage. I'm very interested in learning more about this. My grandmother's family (the one she told everyone she didn't have) lived right in that area, near Virginia Mine, just south of Wegra.
And yeah...John knew how to work it, didn't he? To be fair, two years of hard labor in a mine for an 84-year-old seems pretty harsh for violating a liquor law. I wonder if sentences became more severe across the board for all offenses during the time of high profiting from convicts.
It’s a fascinating and disturbing topic and one that goes deep into all the darkness of the past - slavery, reconstruction, the KKK, Jim Crow laws. I came across so many just horrific accounts of what life was like for the convicts, 90+ percent of whom were poor Blacks, often sent to the mines for minor crimes like vagrancy, and then kept there due to the exaggerated court fees they were required to repay. And greed. Don’t forget greed, which was equally to blame, in so many ways.
And I so wanted to believe everything he said!
When I read he had served under Nathan Bedford Forrest in the Civil War, I began to squirm. Incorrigible is a great adjective to describe John George!