Louisville and Nashville Railroad: Convict Lease Labor Expands

The Louisville and Nashville Railroad became a major user of leased Black convicts in Alabama and Tennessee throughout the 1880s. Men convicted under vagrancy and petty theft laws, overwhelmingly Black, were leased to the railroad at pennies per day. Death rates in railroad convict camps reached 15-20% annually; bodies were frequently buried in unmarked sites along the right-of-way.