Primary Source Set 1
Largely institutionalized after the Civil War and gaining traction during Reconstruction, the system of convict leasing replaced slave labor for many industries in the state. Particularly for labor intensive crops like sugar cane, or dangerous jobs like railroad construction, convict leasing was preferred because it solved a three-fold problem; First, the abolition of slavery emancipated the major labor force in Texas. Convict leasing provided a cheap solution to fill the labor gap left by emancipated slaves. Second, with vagrancy laws in place in Texas as early as 1866, convict labor was never in short supply. One could be arrested for simply being perceived as “idle.” Finally, convict leasing was framed in the Texas legislature as creating profit for the prison system, a fact that made exploiting and dehumanizing “convicted felons” a small price to pay for higher profit margins in the 1870s and 1880s.
Students will learn about enslaved and convict labor in Texas during the 19thand 20thcenturies by examine newspaper coverage of the convict leasing system.
The documents presented in this set provide a snapshot of an ongoing public dialogue about a) the monetary benefit of convict leasing versus the tremendous psychological expense of devaluing human life and exploiting the prisoners.
Document A: An excerpt of a speech given by Alexander Watkins Terrell (a Texas Senator representing Williamson County) to the 18th legislature and reprinted in The Galveston Daily News on March 3, 1883. Terrell opposes the lease-contract system, siting the inhumane treatment of the prisoners. Ironically, throughout his political career Terrell was an avid supporter of disenfranchisement of African Americans and was influential in establishing the poll tax in Texas.
HOW THE CONVICTS ARE TREATED UNDER A
LEASE SYSTEM.
How these convicts may be treated when we have adjourned—and they will be guarded, as I have shown, by paid hirelings of the lessees, miscalled state agents and guards—we can guess from Booth as Mrs. Dick, Mrs. Whiffen as Mrs.
Winthrop. This was, as you may note from the names, -a strong cast, and the changes
that have -been made have only serve to strengthen it.On account of the severity of the weather, your committee were prevented from visiting any of the convict camps except one known as the Wynne farm, near Huntsville. On the Wynne farm your committee found over sixty convicts being worked by Messrs. Cunningham & Ellis, lessees. They respectfully submit that the prisoners on said farm are not treated and provided for as, in their opinion, they should be. They were quartered in too small a box-house*, the windows were too small, with iron bare and without shutters. There was only one small stove in the house, and so arranged as to make it impossible for more than five or six persons to derive any benefit there from at any one time. Your committee also found four sick convicts in said house confined to bunks without any medical attendant. We believe that all such cases should be removed at once to the hospital within the walls.” A rational conclusion. “They found that the bunks and bedding used by the convicts were very filthy, and they submit that in view of the condition of the convicts, they are not provided for or treated as humanely as the laws of our State demand, but they found that the officers and lessees had discovered the wrongs suffered and were seeking to have them corrected, and had ordered the sergeant to be removed before the visit of your committee.
The Galveston Daily News. (Galveston, Tex.), Vol. 41, No. 304, Ed. 1 Sunday, March 11, 1883, newspaper, March 11, 1883; Galveston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth463844/: accessed September 14, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Abilene Library Consortium.
Document B: An article from The La Grange Journal on January 27, 1908, demonstrating the monetary investment in the Ellis and Cunningham sugar plantations.
PURPORT OF PURCHASE.
Object Is to Do Away With the Convict Leasing System
Austin, Jan. 27.—Judge Gill of the penitentiary board, came here and consulted with Governor Campbell regarding the big land deal the state has been engaged in looking to the purchase of the Ellis and Cunningham sugar plantations in Fort Bend county, on which to work state convicts. It is stated that the purchase of these lands will eventually abolish the convict lease system, thereby taking convicts out of competition with free labor and putting them to work manufacturing sugar and its products, which will be a competitive contest
with the sugar trust. It has been announced that the policy of the governor is to abolish the convict lease system, and this method will lead to its ultimate illumination in Texas.
Regarding the protest from citizens of Richmond as to the state purchasing these lands, that it will interfere with conditions generally in Fort Bend county and increase the expenses of
the county in enforcing the criminal laws, the governor stated that he had not as yet received a copy of the protesting resolutions or petition.
Both of the sugar companies value their holdings at something like $1,600,000, yet their properties are assessed for taxes at something like $300,000. The land which the state will
pay $600,000 for has been assessed for only $129,000. Now in this purchase, the state does not acquire the sugar refinery, and if same is assessed for half of its value it will net Fort Bend count[y] more funds than it has ever received from combined tax payments from sugar properties in that county.
La Grange Journal. (La Grange, Tex.), Vol. 28, No. 5, Ed. 1 Thursday, January 30, 1908, newspaper, January 30, 1908; La Grange, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1004478/: accessed September 8, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Fayette Public Library, Museum and Archives.
Document C: An article from The Houston Post on November 3, 1908, demonstrating the horrors of convict leasing and the legislative discussion efforts to abolish the system across the South.
Partial transcription belo
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…The testimony before the committee showed that the mistreatment of the convicts both of the sick and the well was a general characteristic of the leasing system. It was constant habitual and pervaded in a greater or lesser degree all of the lessee convict camps in the State. This general mistreatment consisted of the following particulars or details:
1. The prisoners were not properly housed. They were crowded into or more accurately speaking they were herded at night in stockades with dirt floors and clapboard roofs and were packed together on plank bunks as thick as they could be placed.
2. They were not given bed clothing enough to keep them warm. These structures were commonly called “shacks” and there were spaces between the upright poles that formed the walls that let in the cold in winter while there was no pretense of heating these dirty dens.
3. The prisoners were not properly or sufficiently shod or clothed. They were worked in the cold and wet and water in railroad slush and in plantation ditches.
4. They were not properly fed. Their food was generally of the most inferior quality and insufficient in quantity.
5. As a general rule they were overworked and they were often denied Sunday as a day of rest.
6. They were punished by whipping with a leather strap which was inflicted by sergeants on guard or the lessee’s boss or foreman. The prisoners were whipped often and sometimes unmercifully for the most trivial offenses. There
was no responsibility anywhere or in any quarter for the occasion or manner of the infliction of
punishments which were often of the most brutal and revolting character.
7. In these convict camps or corrals such a thing as the crudest and most ordinary principles of sanitation were ignored or unknown.
8. The sick were habitually neglected. Where it could be done in chronic cases the sick convicts were returned to the prison hospital at Jackson [Mississippi] where they were fairly well treated and a new convict was given the lessee in exchange who in turn was to suffer the cruelties of the convict camp.
9. Ordinarily there was no place for a sick convict in a convict camp so he lay on his board bunk in the “shack” which he shared in common with is many others as could be packed in it And there he lay until he got well or died.
There were many instances shown where a sick convict died right there on his hard board bunk
side by side with living comrades who were sleeping the sleep of their weariness and their misery.
10. The sick rate was always abnormal if not phenomenal and the death rate ran from 10 to 15 per cent per annum and sometimes higher.
11. There were several instances clearly and incontcstibly proved before both of these investigating committees where convicts were literally whipped to death actually dying under the lash.
12. The prisoners were kept in such a state of intimidation that they were generally afraid to divulge the brutalities to which they were subjected.
13. The escape rate is excessive.
14. Finally the whole system was shown to be viciously and inherently wrong and utterly incapable of amendment or reformation. There is but one way to treat it and that is to abolish the whole brutal and inhuman system and place
the prisoners in the absolute exclusive and unobstructed custody and control of the State to be worked exclusively for the State.
Wherever the convict leasing system exists it may be safely asserted that all or the most of these abuses exist. In Alabama in the coal mines there was a death rate one year of 40 per cent of the convict population. Contemplate for
one moment the death -of 400 out of every 1000 caused by brutality and cruel treatment. General John B. Gordon while governor of Georgia made an earnest effort to have the convict leasing system abolished in that State but
the lessee lobby composed of the lessees and sub-lessees and their adherents and hirelings was too strong for him and he failed to accomplish anything of any value.
The Houston Post. (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 24, Ed. 1 Tuesday, November 3, 1908, newspaper, November 3, 1908; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth604727/: accessed September 14, 2020), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu;
Guided Reading Questions
- Based on the newspaper reports, what were the living conditions of leased convicts during the 188os and early 1900s? Use quotes from the text to describe their experience.
- Identify the two arguments against convict leasing.
This way to Primary Source Set 2
