Convict Lease Death Rates Documented: 45 Per 100 in Mississippi

Mississippi's own state records documented that in 1887, 126 of approximately 735 state convicts died in the lease system — a mortality rate of over 17%. Alabama documented similar rates; one private investigator reported that at Slope No. 12 mine of Pratt Coal, 45 of every 100 convicts died in a year. Federal investigator Frederick Hoffman's 1896 Race Traits study used these mortality differentials — without interrogating their causes — to argue Black biological inferiority.