A Summer of Trials, 1903

1.      "… I have also been again and again informed by these persons that this peonage system is more cruel and inhuman than the slavery of antebellum days, since then the master conserved the life and health of the slave for business reasons just as he did that of his horse and mule, but now the master treated the slave unmercifully and with the sole object of getting the greatest possible amount of labor out of him. Moreover a peon costs but a few dollars while a slave used to cost several hundred” (pg. 235).

• This quote stated by Department of Justice investigator Stanley W. Finch gives a general perspicacity of the treatment of blacks who were enslaved under the peonage system. I chose this quote because it highlights the disparities of how slaves under peonage were treated no better, and in most cases worse than animals, especially given the fact that peons...

1. "The Advertiser, like most local whites, remained certain that Pace would never actually be imprisoned, regardless of whether the guilty pleas were affirmed by the court of appeals. “He is in an almost helpless physical condition. He suffers from a bone disease which has affected his feet, and he walks with great effort. It is said that he will be able to produce a surgeon’s certificate showing he is in a terrible physical condition” (pg. 237).

• I selected this quote because it prompted me to think about the media's propensity in recent times to conjecture a white criminal as "mentally unstable" in cases where a crime or an injustice has been committed against people of color. However, if a black defendant is charged with a crime, they are often demonized and ridiculed in the media, often referred to as "thugs". For instance, Dylann Roof (photographed on the left below) is an 18 year old White male charged with the murder of 13 African-Americans. During his initial arrest, terms such as "misunderstood teenager"and "mentally unstable teenager" with a "troubled past" were used to describe him. Whereas in the case of Michael Brown (photographed on the right), was an 18 year old African American male accused of theft was shot 6 times and killed by police, in contrast to Dylann Roof, Mike Brown was often referred to as "no angel" and a "thug" repeatedly by the media thus disclosing the media's blatant partisanship in the portrayal of white criminals vs. black criminals.

1. “In 1883, the U.S Supreme Court declared even those laws unconstitutional, ruling that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments—approved in 1868 to abolish slavery and establish black citizenship—didn’t authorize Congress to pass such enforcement laws. Following the growing national sentiment that race matters be left alone, Congress did nothing to fill the vacuum—leaving a constitutional limbo in which slavery as a legal concept was prohibited by the Constitution, but no statute made an act of enslavement explicitly illegal” (pg. 244)

• I chose this quote because it clearly explains the loopholes of the 13th and 14th Amendment which made convict leasing and forced labor as another form of slavery legal. Fundamentally, even though slavery was abolished legally and blacks could institute their rights as citizens, the loophole which was created by Congress' lack of action made it possible for blacks who were convicted of trivial crimes to be enslaved under convict leasing. A good documentary that explains the loophole of the 13th Amendment in great detail is 13th directed by Ava Duvernay and available on Netflix!

1. “No acknowledgement was made that in a local court, the prosecutor would be a white man elected in all-white elections, the jury guaranteed to be all-white, the judges likely involved in the slaving conspiracy, the buyers of men almost certainly prominent local figures, black attorneys barred from appearing and black witnesses treated as unreliable by nature” (pg. 247)

• I selected this quote because I thought it was significant to comprehend how trials in the South, especially those involving, blacks were conducted. Essentially, all the individuals responsible for the outcome of these were white people or white men to say the least. To my understanding a jury is supposed to reflect the "peers" of the individual being convicted particularly in race, national origin and gender. Can you see where the problem of having an all-white jury in the trial against a black convict/peon lies? Likewise, the judges who are in charge of these cases are most likely involved in the peonage system ergo causing them to be biased in their verdict which is often in favor of white slave/convict leasing owners. 

1. “God forbid that the time will ever come in this country when you are helpless and distressed and have been the victim of oppression when you will be denied that protection of the law to which you appeal and to which every law-abiding human being is entitled among all civilized people…” (pg. 249).

• I chose this quote because it was self explanatory and I reckoned it was an interesting concept to contemplate, the idea of white people being the oppressed and being denied their basic human rights and rights as citizens solely based on the color of their skin.