B.B. Comer's Alabama Coal Interests Profit from Convict Deaths

B.B. Comer, later Alabama governor, is among the industrialists whose coal companies lease Black convicts from the state at rates far below free labor costs. Convicts at Comer-connected facilities are whipped for production shortfalls, denied adequate food and medical care, and buried in unmarked graves when they die. The system makes Alabama's coal industry competitive while killing the workers who power it.