Vagrancy Laws Weaponized to Criminalize Black Workers

Southern states refined vagrancy, enticement, and contract enforcement laws through the 1880s specifically to re-enslave Black labor. Alabama's 1885 vagrancy statute made it a crime to be unemployed or to leave an employer without permission. Arrest, conviction, and lease to private companies could occur within 24 hours. Black men were systematically targeted to supply convict labor markets.