Convict Leasing and Chain Gangs Continue as Racial Labor Exploitation

Though formal convict leasing to private companies was winding down (ending in most states by 1928), chain gang labor on public works continued throughout the 1920s and 1930s, drawing disproportionately on Black prisoners arrested under vagrancy, loitering, and petty theft laws specifically designed to criminalize Black workers. Florida, Georgia, and Alabama operated the largest systems. Conditions were brutal, with documented deaths from overwork, beatings, and inadequate food. John L. Spivak's 1932 exposé 'Georgia Nigger' documented the system nationally. Chain gang labor built significant portions of Southern road infrastructure.