Armed labor revolts, not reform sentiment, ended convict leasing in the South

Evidence

The only protests that did any good came from organized labor. In 1883, the Tennessee Coal, Iron, and Railroad Company hired the thirteen hundred convicts of the Tennessee penitentiary. They used the convicts partly as a lever to force free workers to agree to stiff terms of employment. In 1891, free miners set the convicts loose at the Tennessee Coal Mine Company and burned down the stockades. The next year, miners in Anderson County battled the militia over the issue of convict labor. The lease system was finally abolished in Tennessee after this period of lobbying with fire and with blood. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3473

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s thread on how labor solidarity, not humanitarian conscience, drove change — parallel to the earlier claim that free labor united against convict labor as unfair competition. — connects to: Convict leasing was a rational tool of Southern industrialization, not a precapitalist throwback; The convict lease system rationally accelerated Southern industrialization. — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 85; Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Convict leasing was a rational tool of Southern industrialization, not a precapitalist throwback #responds-to (0.90)
• The convict lease system rationally accelerated Southern industrialization. #responds-to (0.85) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 85
• Southern convict-leasing camps killed convicts at catastrophic rates #complicates (0.80) — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 3468
• Post-slavery prisons reabsorbed emancipated black labor through the convict lease system #corroborates (0.75) — Davis, Angela Y, Are Prisons Obsolete, 253
• Post-emancipation black success provoked sanctioned convict labor and mob violence #complicates (0.75)