Because this is a blog about mass incarceration, its roots and how to intervene in the epidemic, I write a lot about black people and also about the concept of “captivity.” This necessarily leads me to consider slavery and its outcomes but also other social arrangements that have harmed, confined, and imprisoned black folks. Our captivity has usually been connected to capitalism’s need to exploit our labor (for free).

Peonage was a lot more prevalent in the U.S. than is commonly acknowledged. It lasted well into the mid-20th century. Some have called it “slavery by another name.” The truth is however that slavery was/is slavery and peonage was/is forced labor or “debt servitude.” Below, historian Pete Daniel offers a good definition and description of peonage:

Watch What is Peonage? on PBS. See more from Slavery by Another Name.

What was life like for a black peon in the 20th century? The following is an affidavit of a young man named Robert Booker who had escaped peonage on a Georgia farm. He made his way to an NAACP office and Thurgood Marshall forwarded his affidavit to T.M. Alexander, a local activist in Atlanta.

“I do not know who my parents were. My twin brother, George Booker, who is still on the Laster Farm, and myself were orphans and lived in an orphanage in Atlanta. A white man, Mr. Bibby Laster, took us from the orphan home to his farm. I don’t know how old I was, but I carried in wood and carried water into the fields for the workers. Until about five or six months ago I lived on Mr. Laster’s farm in Georgia, near Atlanta, within sight of the Federal Prison. One road on the farm leads to the prison, and the other we used to take when going to town to sell watermelons. I do not know exactly where the farm is located. This information may be obtained from a Mr. Lovely, a colored man who brought ice to the farm every day from Atlanta.

Mr. Laster is a heavy-set man, with light brown hair, gray eyes, about 6′ in height, and about 250 pounds; with a rough scar on the right cheek from ear to lips.

Mr. Laster used to beat any of the Negro workers whenever they did not move fast enough for him. When working in the fields, he used white men as guards to keep the Negroes from running away, and to keep them at work. We had to get up about 3 o’clock in the morning and get the mules into the field and work all day until dark, when we were made
to shell peas. About ten o’clock at night we were given our only meal of the day of cornbread and peas and a piece of meat about the size of your thumb. Before coming to New York I never ate with a fork and knife before. Some of us ate out of tin plates, and some of us ate out of the big pans which they used to mix the bread in. Three of us had to eat out of one of the big pans.

Mr. Laster used the “rabbit-box” when a Negro didn’t do what he said to do. Heavy irons were put on the heads of those who were put in the “rabbit-box.” Mr. Laster would strike you with a rubber hose or anything.

One Sunday, in about November or December of 1939, Mr. Laster asked me to scrub floors and beat up some peas. I was tired and told him that I had “given out” and did not feel like working. Mr. Laster told me I had to work anyhow whether I felt like it or not, and then he cut me with his pocket knife from back of my left ear to the middle of my throat, and the colored people there had to plead with him not to kill me. After the cut healed, I began plowing again. One day while plowing, I went to the edge of the field to get some water, and hearing the B & O freight train in the gulley, I slide down the hill and caught the train. The “conductor” told me that I could ride between the cars. He told me how to get to New York.

I am about 23 years old, 5’5″, have black hair and brown eyes, and dark brown complexion. I would like to get my brother, George Booker, off that farm too.

I understand everything in this statement and every bit of it is true to the best of my knowledge.”

Mary Church Terrell was one of the only black activists to strongly and consistently condemn and organize against peonage. She emphasized its exploitation and brutality. She wrote:

“Colored men are convicted in magistrates’ courts of trivial offenses, such as alleged violation of contract or something of the kind, and are given purposely heavy sentences with alternative fines. Plantation owners and others in search of labour, who have already given their orders to the officers of the law, are promptly notified that some available labourers are theirs to command and immediately appear to pay the fine and release the convict from gaol [jail] only to make him a slave. If the negro dares to leave the premises of his employer, the same magistrate who convicted him originally is ready to pounce down upon him and send him back to gaol [jail]. Invariably poor and ignorant, he is unable to employ counsel or to assert his rights (it is treason to presume he has any) and he finds all the machinery of the law, so far as he can understand, against him. There is no doubt whatever that there are scores, hundreds perhaps, of coloured men in the South today who are vainly trying to repay fines and sentences imposed upon them five, six or even ten years ago. The horror of ball and chain is ever before them, and their future is bright with no hope (p.308).”

One of the most gruesome and tragic stories in the history of U.S. peonage involved two men: John Williams who was white and his black peon or quasi-slave Clyde Manning.

In late February 1921, Lindsey Peterson, Willie Preston and Harry Price were passengers in a car driven by John S. Williams in rural Georgia. In the front seat along with Williams sat Clyde Manning and Charlie Chisolm. All of the men in the car driven by Williams were black and worked for him as peons. The three men in the back were tied up with wire and were very afraid having no idea where they were headed. The car came to a stop in the middle of Allen’s Bridge on the Yellow River. Clyde Manning hesitated before leaving the car. John Williams said: “It’s your neck or theirs, Clyde. Whichever you think the most of.”

Peterson and Preston who were tied together with wire chains and weights (which were bags of rocks) were pulled out of the car. Price was told to stay inside. Clyde Manning led Peterson and Preston to the edge of the bridge. Price who was in the backseat of the car watched and then heard John Williams say: “Throw them over.”

The chained men were pushed over the bridge after a struggle. The bags of rocks that had been tied to their necks made it easy for them to be flipped over.

The three men returned to the car and got inside. Williams drove to Mann’s Bridge next which was over the South River, less than a mile away. When they arrived, Manning and Chisolm got Price out of the backseat. They led him to the edge of the river. Price got free of Chisolm and said: “Don’t throw me over. I’ll get over.” Price got to the railing, turned his back to it, tears streaming down his face and trembling — “Don’t throw me over,” he repeated. Then “Lord have mercy.” He leaned back and met his death.

Clyde Manning was John S. Williams’s peon, his quasi-slave really and so were the men who he had just murdered. It wasn’t the first time that he had seen black men killed by Williams’s order. In fact in the days before, Williams had instructed others to kill several other black men on his plantation farm. He did this because he feared that the Feds had discovered his illegal activities and he decided to destroy the evidence.

Williams took Manning in when he was about 14 years old along with his mother and siblings after his father’s untimely death. Williams was Clyde’s master but he was also in a twisted way a father figure to him. Manning was a man whose existence was confined almost exclusively to that plantation. It was his entire existence.

When Manning stood trial (PDF) for the murders of 11 peons, he told the jury that it was fear for his life that convinced him to help Williams in his killing spree. There were/are many forms of black captivity. It worth remembering this.

You can and should read Marshall McCart’s account of what became known as the John S. Williams “Murder Farm” incident here. Find out the fates of both Williams and Manning if you are curious. If you are interested in a more in-depth telling of this story, I highly recommend a book called “Lay This Body Down” by Gregory A. Freeman. I read it about 9 years ago and I’ve never forgotten it.