Fraudulent Labor Contracts Create Debt Peonage Across South

Planters entering labor contracts with freedpeople systematically overcharged for food, tools, and housing, ensuring workers ended each year deeper in debt. Freedmen's Bureau agents mediated thousands of disputes but were too few to cover the South. After the Bureau closed in 1872, Black workers had no recourse. State laws made leaving a farm while in debt a criminal offense, creating debt peonage effectively identical to slavery.