African American orphans were commercially sold into exploitative servitude after emancipation

Evidence

There were also concerns about children, especially orphans, being exploited this way. “Without a network of institutions to ensure their protection, some African American children fell victim to exploitation.” C. Spencer, “Negro Children Sold into Slavery,” Chicago Inter-Ocean, May 1913, Folder 39-13 (39-13), Illinois Writers Project, Vivian C. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 900

Categorization

• XREF: Extends the post-emancipation coercion strand: debt peonage, convict leasing, and child exploitation as parallel channels of Black labor extraction.
• SEED: Orphan exploitation is a distinctly harrowing corner of the post-1865 coercion story largely absent from popular treatment of reparations — an angle on the hidden-history pillar.