Unfiltered stories of Black resistance, erased heroes, and hidden truths. We connect the past to today’s fights so the next generation never has to ask “why didn’t they teach us this?”
Convict leasing wasn’t a footnote to American history. It was the economic engine that replaced slavery in the post–Civil War South.
After emancipation, Southern states faced a problem they were determined to solve without abandoning racial hierarchy or cheap labor. Slavery had ended, but the plantation economy had not been meaningfully restructured. Formerly enslaved people were now legally free, mobile, and no longer obligated to work for white landowners
