Enslaved workers used to grow cotton and mill flour. Now prisoners grind beef and crate eggs. Here, a historian explores Americans’ troubling habit of consuming the products of slave labor.
California inmates take a break from their ‘jobs’ fighting fires to play some chess.
Reuters/Lucy Nicholson
Prisoners in 17 states are striking to call attention to harsh conditions and low pay for their labor, something that may run afoul of the 13th Amendment and other legal commitments.
After the Civil War, Texas’s sugar cane plantations were still farmed by unpaid black laborers – prisoners forced to work for free in a system called ‘convict leasing.’
An African-American burial ground uncovered at a construction site in Texas has ignited debate on how to protect black history as suburban sprawl overtakes rural areas once farmed by enslaved workers.
Over a period of 30 years, millions of criminals and political prisoners were sent to Soviet labor camps.
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