Freed slaves sentenced to labour

Freed slaves were sentenced to hard labour

The abolition of slavery in the United States in 1865 caused great difficulties for southern plantation owners. One way of continuing to obtain cheap labour was to use prisoners. By systematically imprisoning African Americans for minor offences when the cotton was ready to be picked, the plantations could keep running.

Melissa Rubio’s doctoral thesis, which is based on a unique compilation of census data and various digitalized archives, demonstrates this.

AT THE BEGINNING OF the Civil War in 1861, there were about 4 million slaves in the United States. Their work made the large cotton plantations, which were a cornerstone of the economic system of the southern states, possible. The abolition of slavery meant economic disaster, not only for the plantation owners but for society in general. – In connection with the ban on slavery, the number of African-American prisoners increased in areas where slavery had been common, says Melissa Rubio. One explanation that is often put forward is that the dire financial situation of the emancipated slaves forced them into criminality. However, the crimes African Americans were accused of often involved petty things that had nothing to do with survival. Another explanation is that the plantation owners used the 13th amendment, which admittedly abolished slavery but still permitted its use as a punishment for crimes. This led to emancipated slaves being imprisoned precisely when the need for labour was increasing. However, no major study of this has been done before. My dissertation is the first that systematically, based on a large amount of data, examines the racial differences in the American prison system in order to understand it from an economic perspective.

IN HER RESEARCH, Melissa Rubio has used census data on prisoners and race from all the counties in the entire United States from 1860–1940. – I then compared this data with information in various archives, such as the US Department of Labor archives, which, among other things, documented the prisons’ activities and profitability. There you can unearth facts about the great debate that was going on in the southern states about the relationship between labour that is free and not free respectively, where moral considerations were in direct opposition to the opportunity to make money. For example, having five prisoners carry out work cost the same as employing one free labourer.

Melissa Rubio has also examined the archives of the US Department of Commerce. – I already knew that the slave trade was a matter that was handled by the Department of Commerce. But I was quite shocked when I realized that even after 1865, it was the Department of Commerce that archived facts about prisons, the number of prisoners of different races and the type of punishment, including prison, reform school, hard labour and so forth.

When Melissa Rubio combined the different data, she came to the conclusion that African Americans were often imprisoned precisely when the plantations needed labour.

– THE CRIMES COULD involve petty things, such as noise disturbance or breach of the peace. Vagrancy, i.e., not having a job, could also result in imprisonment.

If it is true that the number of African-American prisoners increased in line with the increasing need for cheap labour, the opposite should also apply: that the number of African-American prisoners decreased when the need for workers declined.

To investigate this, Melissa Rubio studied three causes behind a reduced need for labour: increased mechanization, the Mississippi River floodings which destroyed crops, and cotton blight, resulting in reduced harvests. – Interestingly, there is a clear connection between these three examples and the decline in the number of African-American prisoners. The most interesting example is the cotton blight, because it resulted in an even worse economic disaster than the abolition of slavery. If the theory that African Americans committed crimes mainly because of financial hardship, the blight should have led to an increase in the number of prisoners, but the numbers went down instead.

The fact that blacks often ended up in prison may have influenced a general perception, which may still persist, of African Americans having more pronounced

criminal tendencies than others. – Today, black men constitute 6.5 percent of the American population but approximately 40 percent of the prison population. Blacks are also often sentenced to longer prison terms than whites for the same crime. The fact that there is a historical cause for the injustices is important to understand, not least in light of the many protests that are currently taking place in response to violence against blacks.

MELISSA RUBIO’S thesis consists of three parts. In addition to prisoners being used as labour on the plantations, her thesis is also about how conflicts in Colombia impact social cohesion, and about income risk in developing countries. – There are many reasons for my interest in social justice, but one of them is probably the fact that I grew up in Colombia, one of the world’s most unequal countries. It is hard not to wonder how it came to be this way and why there are so many injustices in the world. Now I have a postdoctoral position in Cologne where I will continue to research these issues. Cologne is a very international city and even though I will miss Gothenburg, I am really looking forward to my new job.

Text: Eva Lundgren Photo: Johan Wingborg

Melissa Rubio

Latest achievement: On June 16, she defended her doctoral thesis on The Economics of Coercive Institutions, Conflict, and Development at the Department of Economics. Next challenge: A six year postdoctoral position at the University of Cologne. Family: I was born in Miraflores, a small town in the Andes that produces amazing coffee and lots of papayas. I have a three-year old son and three younger siblings. My father was a politician and my mother was a veterinarian. Interests: Long-distance swimming, dancing, cycling, spending time with friends, historical fiction, popular science, trying to improve my cooking. Book tips: My favourite book is Inés of My Soul by Isabel Allende, but I also recommend Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker.