By Cindi Branham
Slavery has been practiced since the first African slaves arrived in 1800, when Alabama was still a part of the Mississippi territory. Even though the slaves were emancipated in 1863, in the State of Alabama slavery has never really gone away and thrives today.
No matter the era, industrious and bigoted politicians and lawmakers have kept it alive for reasons of profit and hatred.
Without going into it, I was stunned to learn the history behind the history through an extended workshop called Sacred Ground. I will write about that workshop one day, but it gave me insight into the topic of slavery in Alabama and the nation for this column.
The history of Alabama’s constitution provides a window into the state’s relationship with slavery. We’ve had seven constitutions to date, with all but the current one established via State Conventions: 1819 (converting Alabama Territory into a State), 1861 (Secession), 1865 (Reconstruction), 1868 (Reconstruction), 1875 (ending Reconstruction), 1901 (Jim Crow) and the current document, adopted in 2022.
With the 1865 and 1868 constitutions, Blacks were granted the ability to earn and keep wages, vote, and run for public office. During this period, they did just that, with many families raising their social and financial status. Many ran for and won state-wide and even Congressional offices.
They were able to amass wealth and pass it on to their heirs.
Whites blamed their lack of success on Blacks. Thus, the biased 1875 constitution came about in large part to remove some rights from Blacks.
It’s the 1901 constitution – the one we all live under today – that was drafted in the era of Jim Crow by white landowners to further suppress Blacks, that solidified the removal of their right to vote, which had been granted in the 1868 Reconstruction constitution.
The 2022 version merely re-organizes and merges some of the 1000+ amendments and removed the most racial language. It still concentrates power in Montgomery with a Republican supermajority, making self-determination for communities across the state a pipe dream. Even this can stall development of predominantly Black towns and cities.
So, the first era of slavery in Alabama was just that – slavery, which was supposedly eradicated by the Civil War.
Regardless of the constitution at the time, tenement sharecropping became the next era. Former slaves who stayed on lands to continue farming were taken advantage of by the white landowners. The payments for their patch of land that “promised” to make them landowners after they’d paid off the debt of the land were so high; they could never continue to make payments and feed their families. Like the oppression of student loan debt today, they probably paid off the value of the land but were told they hadn’t paid enough, keeping them slaves to the land they dreamed of owning.
Fast forward to the late 1800’s and early 1900’s and Jim Crow takes over most of the South, bringing in an era of serious Black repression through the generation of fear among Black residents. Lynchings became a common way of both punishment outside the law and the reigning in Blacks’ freedoms.
Anything that could be taken away was. The 1921 Tulsa race massacre, also known as the Black Wall Street Massacre, saw the destruction of a 35-block section of Tulsa known as Greenwood. Its residents had amassed considerable wealth (thus the name Black Wall Street) and Tulsa Whites took the first opportunity to burn it all to the ground, killing hundreds if not thousands in the process.
All of this was wrong. Direly wrong. But it wasn’t the end of slavery in Alabama.
Starting in the Jim Crow era, law enforcement started rounding up Black men and boys for little to no reason. Even though the charges were frivolous or non-existent, they were taken away and put to work on chain gangs and in coal mines in the Birmingham area.
No trial. The truth is that there would have rarely been evidence to back up the officer’s claims. Being Black and in the wrong place at the wrong time was enough to allow law enforcement to recruit more slaves.
In the coal mines, some prisoners (I use that term loosely because they didn’t go through the process to become an actual prisoner) went underground and never saw the sun again. They were fed little, beaten, and would be literally worked to death.
After WWII, the GI Bill offered rewards to soldiers returning home by offering free college education and assistance in buying a nice home. This one benefit built the middle class in America…
Not for Blacks. GI Bill denials for housing and education came down from the top of the Veterans Administration and Washington DC. With segregation still rampant, Historically Black Colleges and Universities were too few to handle the thousands of returning Black men who came home ready to take advantage of the rewards being offered by the VA for their service.
The government did begin building a different kind of housing for these men and channeled returning GI’s and their young families into these crowded multi-story slums.
You can see the effect of this segregated housing on the Black family culture today. No yards or proximity to green spaces, no physical separation, little physical safety, only public transportation and limited employment opportunities grew into the frustration and violence that’s present today.
And no institutional wealth. That’s the wealth – however small – our families bestowed on us generation after generation.
It came to us in a start as a middle-class family. It came to us in the fact that college and a better career were possible for us, even if we had to work our way through or go into debt; we had that start. It came to us in inherited property or money.
Having none of that gets you…nowhere. The lack of institutional wealth among persons of color has a tendency to keep them right where they start. They don’t have the option of a career, but rather a job.
When I moved to Alabama in 1977, there were still chain gangs, suffering at the hands of inhumane prison guards. The Federal Courts had to make us end them, but are they really gone?
The most recent era of slavery in Alabama has to do with our parole board’s choice to keep inmates who are allowed out to work menial jobs (mainly fast food) behind bars when their parole eligibility dates come up.
Most of these prisoners are in for non-violent crimes and have exhibited good behavior while in prison. They’re trusted to leave to work a shift and come back, but not to go out on their own. I don’t even think we have even tested a recidivism rate with these individuals, so we really don’t know how it could work out. But every single one is being denied.
The Alabama Parole Board regularly turns down parole work-release prisoners who have proven their reliability, but there may be another reason: The state keeps a good chunk of their income for itself. The penal system is making millions if not billions of dollars from this situation but doesn’t trust them to be free to become productive members of society.
Or doesn’t want to lose the revenue.
As Shakespeare might have said, “Slavery by any other name…”
Why hasn’t anything changed? The people who owned slaves, lynched “free” Blacks, forced them into the mines and chain gangs, denied them equitable education and housing, and refused them parole are the ancestors of those who today repeat the same. (Yes, I’m talking mainly to you, South Alabama, where all these decisions have been made.)
Today’s penal system officials and parole board officers grew up in households that saw nothing wrong with these phases of slavery over the centuries. Is it in their DNA?
Until Alabamians decide that all this isn’t ok, that things need to change, it won’t.
And we all pay for those sins.
