A US assistant attorney general openly called convict leasing involuntary servitude in 1908.

Evidence

Charles Wells Russell declared convict leasing “a system of involuntary servitude—that is to say, persons are held to labor as convicts under those laws who have committed no crime.” But that did not help twenty-two-year-old Green Cottenham. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 282

Categorization

• DEFINE: Official federal acknowledgment that convict leasing was involuntary servitude, yet enforcement was nil.