An Archaeology of Convict Leasing in the American South

ABSTRACT

Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, thousands of men, women, and children in the American South were forced to labor for private businesses and individuals under the convict lease system. This system disproportionately impacted Black men and boys, although it also ensnared Black women and girls as well as poor white men, women, and children. Motivated by the financial gains achieved through leasing prisoners, states ensured that the system continued despite numerous highly-publicized human rights violations. Although numerous scholars and grassroots activists have brought attention to the history of convict leasing, historical archaeology has only engaged with the phenomenon in a limited capacity. In this article, we call for archaeologists, and archaeologists of the African Diaspora in particular, to engage with sites and materialities of convict leasing more directly. Our article outlines a potential path forward for such a research program.

KEYWORDS:

• Convict leasing
• forced labor
• incarceration
• archaeology
• cultural heritage
• community engagement

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their appreciation to Lydia Marshall for organizing the 2022 SHA session and this thematic issue. Westmont would like to thank John Grammer, Sarah Sherwood, and Woody Register from the Center for Southern Studies at the University of the South.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Imprisoned men were not the first unfree laborers to lay tracks for the Western North Carolina Railroad company; the Civil War created a labor shortage during the early years of the railroad’s construction and the company turned to leasing enslaved people from their enslavers (Abrams 1976).

2 Louisiana State Penitentiary is often referred to simply as “Angola”, a name it shares with the antebellum plantation which preceded it. The plantation was named for the country of Angola, the place from which many of the people enslaved there had been trafficked from (Leeper 1976).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of North Carolina’s Townsend Family Southern Futures Graduate Scholars Program; the University of North Carolina’s Wilson Special Collections Library Pre-Dissertation Prospectus Fellowship; the American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship.

Notes on contributors

V. Camille Westmont

V. Camille Westmont is currently an American Council of Learned Societies Fellow and an affiliate at the Center for Advanced Spatial Technology at the University of Arkansas. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Maryland in 2019. Her work focuses on African diaspora archaeology, labor archaeology, landscape analyses, and public engagement.

Cayla B. Colclasure

Cayla B. Colclasure is a PhD student in anthropology at the University of North Carolina and a Townsend Family Southern Futures Graduate Scholar. She received her MA in anthropology from the University of Alabama, where she was awarded the Graduate School’s Outstanding Thesis Award. She is a historical archaeologist whose work focuses on labor, carceral systems, community-engaged research, and public outreach in Appalachia and across the American South.