Vagrancy and Loitering Laws Used to Criminalize Black Workers and Force Labor

Vagrancy, loitering, and 'failure to work' laws across Southern states were used throughout the 1920s and 1930s to arrest Black men and women who could not prove employment, fining them amounts they could not pay and then leasing them to employers or road gangs as punishment. These Black Codes, evolved from Reconstruction-era statutes, functioned as a labor conscription system. Police in states including Alabama, Georgia, and Florida routinely arrested Black men at harvest time to supply temporary agricultural labor. The laws were racially targeted in practice: white unemployment was never criminalized under the same statutes.