War on People

Leonardo Ramos

Professor Brody

English 1100-55

01 December 2016

War on People

Did the Thirteenth Amendment abolish slavery or was it pushed from plantations to prisons? The Thirteenth amendment states: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude(s), except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. “Except as a punishment for crime…”, those few words are frequently ignored when the topic of slavery is discussed. Unfortunately, that line technically means that the two million people incarcerated as of today are legally considered slaves under the Constitution. The President of Brown University said “There are more African-American men in prison, jail, on probation or parole than were enslaved in 1850”. The United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the entire world according to the Population Reference Bureau. The loophole is imbedded in the Constitution therefore; it could be used as a tool for whichever purposes one wants to use it. Although this amendment was passed to end slavery, it allows for a loophole to strip prisoners of their rights and is shown through examining the judicial system.

To begin with, slavery was an economic system; since the Southern economy was left in tatters at the end of the Civil War.  Four million slaves were part of the economic growth in the South and now they were free. How does one rebuild an economy? Well, why not exploit the Thirteenth Amendment loophole, which figuratively states that one has no rights if convicted of a crime.  The nation’s first prison boom followed the Civil War, with African Americans arrested on masses (Gilmore 1). They were arrested for extremely minor crimes such as loitering. While in prison, they lost their basic rights, becoming a slave once again. They endured some of the worst working conditions which made it very easy for the South to save money on rebuilding. Blacks began to get labeled as criminals with harsh propaganda making them out to be a threat. This created a new wave of terror, African Americans were now seen as criminals making people turn their frustrations and hatred towards them.  The reason may be that the white political elite needed black bodies to be working again.

Laws were passed basically making African Americans second-class citizens. The Jim Crow era was a fixed system of laws designed to keep blacks from experiencing any of their new rights.  Jim Crow laws segregated people of color; if you were black you used different bathrooms and drinking fountains. You were not looked at as a human being, but rather as an animal. African Americans were hung, beaten, and murdered in senseless ways for being black. For example, Emmett Till was a fourteen-year-old boy who had his eyes gouged out and body thrown into a river for supposedly flirting with a white man’s wife (History.com Staff, 1). This did not discourage African Americans from fighting for their rights. Many brave men and women stood up for what they believed in. Politicians and the media portrayed civil rights activists like criminals. African Americans were now looked upon as a threat to white society. Activists began getting locked up for speaking up against discrimination. During the Civil Rights Movement, crime started to increase with many speculating that if we allowed blacks to have rights the country would be repaid with crime.