Harlan held that the Thirteenth Amendment destroys all incident or badge of slavery

Evidence

Once again Justice Harlan dissented from the majority opinion. He would have ruled in favor of the black workers because the Thirteenth Amendment was designed to end not just slavery itself but all “incidents or badges” of slavery. The eight workers, in his view, were victims of a conspiracy of white men who wanted to rob them of their right to work, which was a clear badge of slavery. Inhibiting these black workers from making valid contracts for services solely because of their race, he recognized, was an incident of slavery that “the 13th Amendment destroyed.” The threat of violence, like those faced by the men in the Arkansas sawmill, had been omnipresent since slavery ended. — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 402

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines the ‘badges and incidents of slavery’ doctrine that reparations legal claims build on.