Fraudulent Labor Contracts Trap Freedpeople in Debt Peonage

Throughout Reconstruction, freedpeople entering labor contracts with planters faced systematic fraud. Planters charged for food, tools, and housing at inflated rates, ensuring workers ended each year deeper in debt. Freedmen's Bureau agents mediated thousands of disputes but were too few to cover the South systematically. After the Bureau closed in 1872, Black workers had no recourse against fraudulent accounting. State laws made leaving a farm while in debt a criminal offense, creating debt peo