After the war it was for many years worked by gangs of Negro convicts,—and black convicts then were even more plentiful than now; it was a way of making Negroes work, and the question of guilt was a minor one.
Du Bois describes the post-Civil War convict lease system, highlighting its use as a means of forced labor for Black individuals regardless of actual guilt.
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Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.