Debt Peonage Traps Hundreds of Thousands of Black Southerners in Involuntary Labor

Debt peonage — whereby Black workers were advanced food, housing, and tools against future labor and then kept permanently indebted through fraudulent bookkeeping — trapped hundreds of thousands of Black sharecroppers and tenant farmers across the South. Landlords kept the only accounts; workers had no independent means to verify charges. State laws criminalized leaving employment while indebted. Federal prosecutions of peonage were sporadic and rarely resulted in significant penalties for employers. The system functioned as a continuation of slavery through legal mechanisms.