US Steel and Tennessee Coal and Iron Use Convict Labor Under Death Conditions

US Steel Corporation and its subsidiary Tennessee Coal and Iron operated convict lease camps in Alabama where predominantly Black prisoners worked in mines and smelters. Death rates in convict lease camps ran as high as 40% annually in some years. Prisoners were leased from the state for a fee per head; the state had no incentive to monitor conditions. Historian Douglas Blackmon documented in 'Slavery by Another Name' how this system constituted a re-enslavement of thousands of Black men arrested on trivial or fabricated charges.