Stian Rice, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Since Reconstruction, states have leased prisoners to US industries. That diminished in the 20th century, but now it’s resurging, with prisoners leased to harvest food for American consumers.
Henry W. Grady coined the phrase the ‘New South.’
C.W. Mates/Library of Congress
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.