I agree with all these reasons, and we must look at additional facts: though the selling of black American labor bound into contracts by sheriffs and justices of the peace on the local level, but under state government sanction, convict leasing program generated great wealth from black American men’s labor (and some women) for the state governments and corporations. The allegations for arresting most black Americans in the Southeast were flimsy to non-existent, but the contracts were state sanctioned. States like Alabama took in by 1900 about 70 percent of the their state budget, which paid to build white schools, from the renting or leasing of the black labor. Convict leasing was vastly profitable, like antebellum slavery, for the same reason: the exploitation of someone else’s labor for profit. If a coal mine owner for example would have to pay in modern terms pay $8 dollars and hour instead of $0.50 and hour for a leased convict, than that saving would make the coal a bit cheaper, but not a lot. The purpose is to keep the difference to get rich. Thus, the white owner, even with white managers, would still get $3-5 and hour difference for himself. So whatever he paid the state, even if $1 an hour, was still an immense savings.
By 1900, there was a building program to perfect this type of convict leasing. But a bigger cost savings over slavery was in cost saving in buying the black entrapped labor that was exploited. In antebellum slavery, the planter had to put a tremendous amount of money up front, usually lent from banks and investors, to buy an enslaved human, for about $20,000, even more. But the 1900 type system was a leasing system, so the initial outlay for the entrapped black convict leasing was only the fine to the sheriff and the payment of the official state seal on the documents, about $2,800 by one of my estimates when adding up all the costs into modern dollars. And if before the end of the “contract” that was sanctioned under state laws the black man died from over-exhaustion and overwork, as often happened, that would be sad, but the reality was leasing was relatively less money lost that buying. And the mine owner could call on the sheriff to go find some black men to arrest under false allegations.
Stolen lives, stolen labor. 5 Percent of the black convict leasing force dead at the end of every year in some cola mines. With the state government budgets much richer, building the New South from the profits of renting out black American men. That’s a good case for reparations to, and show in modern times how whites were getting rich from leasing black labor.
In Florida’s panhandle, the turpentine industry and lumber industry estimated to hold 30,000 black men in such bondage. The federal government did an investigation around 1905 into this, which is where the number came from. The black Americans made no money of course, and were killed or beaten when trying to escape. I find this time period when I look into it just as depraved as antebellum slavery in many regards.

Thank you for bringing up the case for reparations. The more voices and ideas there are around it, very notably what you call for here, the strong the movement and the deeper the insights. Great work in making these key connections about the rape and exploitation of black women’s bodies. Recognizing that pain is also repairing the dignity.