The judicial system was weaponized to supply post-Emancipation white labor needs.

Evidence

This travesty happened only because the judicial system was weaponized on behalf of white labor needs. The end of slavery meant white business owners could no longer extract free black labor, “so they turned to mass arrests making convict leasing popular and profitable.” — Dorothy A. Brown, Getting to Reparations, 281

Categorization

• DEFINE: This establishes convict leasing’s causal origin — the end of free black labor drove mass arrests that replaced it.