Debt Peonage: Black Workers Held Illegally Across the Deep South

Federal investigators and journalists documented widespread debt peonage — holding workers by debt against their will — in Florida turpentine camps, Georgia farms, and Alabama coal mines through the 1890s. Men who accepted small advances were informed they owed far more and were held by armed guards. Those who fled were hunted, beaten, and returned. The system was so entrenched that a 1900 federal grand jury in Alabama indicted numerous planters, though few were convicted.