NOTES

Abbreviations:
ADAH	Alabama Department of Archives and History,
Montgomery, Ala.
AHC	Atlanta History Center, Atlanta, Ga.
BCC	Bibb County Courthouse, Centreville, Ala.
BPLA	Birmingham Public Library Archives, Birmingham, Ala.
BTW Papers	Booker T. Washington Papers, Volumes 1-14
EPRRC	National Archives, Regional Records Center, East Point, Ga.
GDAH	Georgia Department of Archives and History, Atlanta, Ga.
NA	National Archives, Washington, D.C.
RG60, NA	Department of Justice, Peonage Files, Record Group 60, National Archives, Washington, D.C.
SCHS	Shelby County Historical Society, Columbiana, Ala.
TCC	Tallapoosa County Courthouse, Dadeville, Ala.

INTRODUCTION

1. "Sheriff's Prisoners Register," 1906-1910, SCHS.

2. Willie Clarke, Leroy Bandy, Verdell Wade, interviews by the author with former miners and witnesses, January 2002.

3. Ibid.

4. Carrie Kinsey to Theodore Roosevelt, July 31, 1903, RG60, NA.

CHAPTER I: THE WEDDING

1. Rhoda Coleman Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), p. 15.

2. Deed of Sarah Cotard to Charles Cottingham, Dec. 5, 1825; deed of Malcolm McCray to Charles Cottingham, Jan. 8, 1831, BCC. In 1825, Charles Cottingham paid $200 for land and lots in the town of Centreville. In 1831, he bought more property on the east side of the Cahaba River.

3. United States of America, Bureau of the Census. Eighth Census of the United States, 1860. East Side Cahaba River (Free Inhabitants), Bibb, Alabama, p. 157.

4. Anna Blanche Cottingham, The Cottingham's of Bibb County: Vol. 1 (Ada, Okla.: Pontotoc County Historical and Genealogical Society, 1970), p. 10.

5. Deed of Elisha Cottingham to Rebecca Battle, May 22, 1852, BCC.

6. Ibid.

7. Marriage license of Albert Cottingham and Laura Pratt, Sept. 8, 1866, by J.W. Starr, Bibb County Marriages, SCHS, F-115.

8. Congress enacted a bill on March 3, 1865, creating the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, with a mandate to provide food, clothing, and other assistance to victims of the Civil War, white and black.

9. Edward Royce, The Origins of Southern Sharecropping (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993), p. 101.

10. See Edward Magdol, “Local Black Leaders in the South, 1867–1875: An Essay Toward the Reconstruction of Reconstruction History,” Societas—A Review of Social History 4 (Spring 1974), cited in Royce, pp. 103–5.

11. Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), p. 48.

12. James R. Bennett, Old Tannehill: A History of the Pioneer Ironworks in Roupes Valley (1829–1865) (Birmingham: Jefferson County Historical Commission, 1986), pp. 27–28.

13. Ethel Armes, “Adventures in Early Iron Country,” 1910, SCHS.

14. Doris Fancher Farrington, unpublished typescript of oral history, in possession of author, n.d.

15. David L. Nolen, “Wilson's Raid on the Coal and Iron Industry in Shelby County” (thesis, University of Alabama in Birmingham, Spring 1988), pp. 2–3.

16. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 22.

17. Ibid., p. 26.

18. Deed of purchase by the Confederate States of America of Bibb County Iron Co., Sept. 7, 1863, BCC.

19. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 29.

20. Joseph Hodgson, ed., The Alabama Manual and Statistical Register for 1869 (Montgomery: Montgomery Daily Mail, 1869), p. 105.

21. Advertisement in The Sunday Mississippian, Jan. 24, 1864, ADAH.

22. Ellison, p. 134.

23. Eugenia Wallace Logan, copy of typescript of oral history, in possession of author, 1935.

24. Cirrenia Langston, “Childhood Memories of the War Between the States,” Centreville Press, March 14, 1934, in Fern Langston, ed., Echoes of Six Mile (privately published, 1994), p. 107; Ellison, pp. 128–29.

25. Nolen, p. 1.

26. James Pickett Jones, Yankee Blitzkrieg: Wilson's Raid Through Alabama and Georgia (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1976), p. 3.

27. Gov. T. H. Watts to Lt. Gen. Polk, April 2, 1864, The War of Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1880–1901), pp. 734–35.

28. The War of Rebellion, pp. 404–16.

29. Frank E. Vandiver, “Josiah Gorgas and the Brierfield Iron Works,” Alabama Review, January 1950, citing Walter L. Fleming, Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama (New York, 1905), p. 254.

30. Ellison, p. 144.

31. Mary Ann (Cobb) Johnson McNeill, copy of unpublished typescript, in possession of author, n.d.

32. Ellison, p. 144.

33. Ibid., p. 147.

34. Royce, p. 72.

35. Ibid.

36. Ibid., p. 75.

37. Deed of Elisha and Nancy Cottingham to John P. Cottingham, James M. Cottingham, Moses L. Cottingham, and Harry P. Cottingham, Feb. 8, 1868, BCC.

38. Deed of Rebecca Battle to Elisha Cottingham, Feb. 22, 1868, BCC.

39. Deed of Moses Cottingham to John G. Henry, Feb. 27, 1868, BCC.

40. Deed of Moses Cottingham to P.W., Feb. 27, 1868, BCC.

41. Deed of Moses L. Cottingham to J. W. Pruit, Jan. 21, 1869, BCC.

42. Deeds of Elias Bishop to McSpaden, Aug. 28, 1869; to Jasper Thompson, Aug. 21, 1869, BCC.

43. Deed of Sarah Bishop to John C. Henry, July 6, 1870, BCC.

44. Ellison, p. 92.

45. Deed of Purchase by Elias Bishop, filed December 27, 1836, BCC. Bishop acquired nearly two hundred acres on the east side of the Cahaba River, Township 22, Section 11, Range 9.

46. 1860 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Bibb County, Ala.

47. Langston, Echoes, pp. 107–11.

48. Ellison, p. 29.

49. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe's landmark abolitionist novel published in 1852, the character Augustine St. Clare tells the story of a powerful slave named Scipio who despite repeated beatings remained obstinate and disobedient. After Scipio escapes and is shot by a search party, St. Clare nurses him back to health and then gives him papers setting him free. Scipio, now devoted and gentle, rips the documents in half in gratitude to his master, and soon dies, after embracing Christianity.

50. “Manifest of Brigantine Arethusa,” arriving Port of New Orleans, Nov. 6, 1821; Inward Slave Manifests of the Port of New Orleans, Roll 2, January– March 1821, Entry #360, transcribed by Dee Parmer Woodtor, www.afrigeneas.com/slavedata/background.html (April 1999). A twelve-year-old slave, height four feet three inches, named Scipio is listed among slaves owned by Townes L. Webb of Petersburg, Virginia.

51. 1850 U.S. Census, Slave Schedule, Bibb County. The Cottingham slave quarters were likely similar to those of John E. Green, on a 3,400-acre plantation near the town of Woodstock, Alabama: “The place required numerous slaves and mules to work it. The old slave cabins were located about a hundred feet north of the present well on the southeast side of the house. Across the present highway was a large mule lot, cotton gin, sorghum mill, and a few other smaller buildings.” See Ellison, p. 85.

52. Record of Incorporation, Bibb Steam Mill Company, Nov. 26, 1850, BCC.

53. “Minutes of the Mobile Conference,” Methodist Church Records, pp. 37–38, transcribed at homepages.rootsweb.com/~marykozy/text_files/starfile.shtml. Methodism was not a faith for those who enjoyed even modest worldly pastimes. Early in Starr's years of service, pastors of his Alabama conference met to decry the dangers and immorality of “dram drinking,” viewing races, attending “dancing parties,” circuses, or theaters, and “the indulgence of superfluous ornaments.” Starr prided himself on his “rule” over his wife and children and the believers to whom he ministered. So visceral was his passion for stern, orderly church and family hierarchy that Starr lived much of his adult life agonizing over his shameful pliancy as a young minister to the leaders of a congregation that wished to allow its young people to dance. Starr confided to another pastor late in life that as a result he “never afterwards had the same power and influence over a congregation.” On his deathbed, Starr implored his fellow preachers to remember that “the old fashioned doctrine of holiness, as taught by our fathers, is true; it is the doctrine of the Bible …preach it to the people.”

54. Reynolds E. Wallace Jr., “Recollections of the Past: Wesley Chapel,” copy of unpublished typescript, in possession of author, 1996.

55. Deed of J. W. and Hannah Starr to J. S. Hansberger, Nov. 24, 1868, BCC. Rev. Starr and Hannah in November 1868 agreed to sell more than two hundred acres east of Ridge Road to Hansberger, owner of an adjacent tannery, reserving to themselves access to a spring on the property. Harry P. Cottingham bought a total of 161 acres in May 1865 from the longtime family neighbor Pulaski Wallace; the land was adjoined by two ninety-foot-wide lots sold near the same time to J. W. Starr for $2,502. Deed of Harry P. Cottingham to P. Wallace, May 18, 1865, BCC.

56. Marguerite Starr Crain and Janell Turner Wenzel, They Followed the Sun: The Story of James Penn Starr and Georgian Theus: Their Ancestors and Their Progenies (Dallas: Suburban Tribune, 1971), cited at members.aol.com/InmanGA/family.starr.html.

57. Vandiver, “Josiah Gorgas,” p. 12, citing Gorgas diary entry, Aug. 3, 1865.

58. Marriage license of Henry Cottinham and Mary Bishop, Jan. 8, 1868, by J. W. Starr, Bibb County Marriages, SCHS.

CHAPTER II: AN INDUSTRIAL SLAVERY

1. 1860 Census.

2. Rhoda Coleman Ellison, Bibb County, Alabama: The First Hundred Years, 1818–1918 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), pp. 82–83.

3. Ibid.

4. Donald E. Collins, ed., “A Georgian's View of Alabama in 1836,” Alabama Review, January 1972, p. 221.

5. Harper's Weekly, July 13, 1861, p. 442.

6. Ellison, p. 69.

7. Frederick Law Olmsted, A Journey in the Back Country (New York: Mason Brothers, 1860), p. 64.

8. Cited in Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Traveller's Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States (New York: Mason Brothers, 1862), p. 439.

9. James C. Cobb, The Most Southern Place on Earth: The Mississippi Delta and the Roots of Regional Identity (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), p. 22.

10. Ibid., p. 13.

11. Ibid., p. 23.

12. Ibid., pp. 13, 20–23.

13. Ibid., p. 26.

14. Ellison, p. 97.

15. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of Commerce, 1910), p. 73.

16. Ellison, p. 100.

17. Armes, p. 72.

18. Ibid., p. 71.

19. Frank E. Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company in the Civil War: A Study of a Confederate Industry,” Alabama Review (January 1948), p. 14.

20. Armes, pp. 67–68.

21. James R. Bennett, Old Tannehill: A History of the Pioneer Ironworks in Roupes Valley (1829–1865) (Birmingham, Ala.: Jefferson County Historical Commission, 1986), p. 18.

22. Ibid., p. 22.

23. Ibid., p. 18.

24. The South Carolina Railroad reported in its corporate records at the end of 1861 the ownership of nearly ninety slaves, at a total investment of $77,566. Similar records from the North Carolina Railroad during 1862 show the company leasing 273 slaves from owners scattered across the state. By 1864, the number had grown to nearly four hundred. The Richmond & Petersburg Railroad owned 118 slaves in that year, employing a dozen as firemen and train hands, two dozen in their mechanics shops, and a score of slaves repairing tracks. The Virginia Central relied on more than three hundred slaves during the Civil War, primarily for the building and repair of rail lines but also assigning dozens of blacks as brakemen and firemen on railroad cars. Also see Kenneth M. Stampp, The Peculiar Institution: Slavery in the Ante-bellum South (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1956).

25. Armes, pp. 76, 66, 68.

26. Ibid., p. 74.

27. Ibid., p. 78.

28. Bennett, p. 27.

29. Ibid., p. 28.

30. Armes, p. 169.

31. Anderson to Ware, Feb. 12, 1859, Shelby Iron Co. Papers, University of Alabama Library, cited in Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company,” p. 15.

32. John W. Lapsley, a “militant industrialist” and early Alabama railroad builder, was associated with the Shelby Coal Co. and the Shelby Lime Co., both essential to the Shelby Iron Works. On March 18, 1862, to provide capital for the Confederate expansion, Lapsley, another major slave owner named John M. McClanahan, and Henry H. Ware, John R. Kenan, Andrew T. Jones, and James W. Lapsley each bought a one-seventh interest in the Shelby Works. Cited in ibid., pp. 14–16.

33. 1860 Census, Shelby County Slave Schedules.

34. Referring to A. N. DeWitt & Co., Columbus, Miss., making two hundred barrels a week; Griswold & Gunnison, pistol makers in Griswoldville, Ga. See Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company.”

35. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 24.

36. Vandiver, “The Shelby Iron Company,” p. 20.

37. J. Michael Bunn, “Slavery in the Shelby Iron Works During the Civil War,” Shelby County Historical Society Quarterly (March 2003), pp. 24–29.

38. Ibid.

39. Bennett, Old Tannehill, p. 17.

40. Armes, pp. 162–64.

41. Justin Fuller, “History of the Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, 1852–1907” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, 1966), p. 280.

42. W. David Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 34; also see Alex Lichtenstein's review, Alabama Review 51 (April 1998), pp. 106–13.

43. John T. Milner, “Report to the Governor of Alabama on the Alabama Central Railroad” (Montgomery: Advertiser Book and Job Steam Press Print, 1859), pp. 44–45, ADAH.

44. Arney R. Childs, ed., The Private Journal of Henry William Ravenel, 1859–1887 (Columbia, S.C., 1947), p. 256, cited in William Cohen, “Negro Involuntary Servitude in the South, 1865–1940,” Journal of Southern History (February 1976), p. 34.

45. Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), p. 100.

46. Ibid., p. 169.

47. Ibid., pp. 82, 117.

48. Ibid., pp. 133, 154–55, 161, 169, 202.

49. Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), pp. 14–15, 66–67.

50. Annual Report of the Inspectors of the Alabama Penitentiary for the Year Ending Sept. 30, 1877 (Montgomery: Barrett & Brown, 1878), ADAH.

51. Convict Legislation and Rules, 1882–1883, Department of Corrections, ADAH.

52. History of the Penitentiary, Special Message of Gov. Cobb, 1882, ADAH.

53. First Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1894, to August 31, 1896 (Montgomery: Roemer Printing, 1896), ADAH.

CHAPTER III: SLAVERY’S INCREASE

1. 1870 Census, Bibb County.

2. Headstone of Elisha Cottingham, 1793–Nov. 10, 1870; headstone of Nancy Parker Cottingham, Feb. 3, 1796–July 22, 1873.

3. 1870 Census, Bibb County, Six Mile Township.

4. 1870 Census, Bibb County, Randolph Township, Brierfield Post Office.

5. Shelby Sentinel, Aug. 16, 1877.

6. Docket of A. M. Elliott, Justice of the Peace, 1878–1880, SCHS.

7. Convicts at Hard Labor for the County in the State of Alabama on the First Day of March 1883, microfiche, ADAH.

8. “Jefferson County Circuit Court Convict Docket, 1902–1903,” BPLA.

9. Tallapoosa County Deed Book: “This agreement made and entered into between men Sevi Pearson of the first part, and John W. Pace of the second part, whereas Sevi Pearson of the first part has been convicted before Luke Davenport, a notary public of and ex officio J.P. on the 28th day of April 1885 for an assault and battery on Cora Iverson, and a fine of sixty dollars imposed and the further sum of ten and 50/100s cash, and whereas the said Sevi Pearson has confessed judgment for the above arrest and John W. Pace has become his security on payment for said conviction and upon becoming his security for said amount and paying the same for the said Sevi Pearson, bond himself to work faithfully for John W. Pace for eight dollars per month for nine months and further agrees that he will take such treatment as other convicts this April 28 1885, signed in open court, Luke Davenport, NP, Sevi Pearson, John Pace.”

10. Thomas L. Cochran to R. H. Dawson, Nov. 23, 1887, Administrative Correspondence, 1881–1897, Dawson Letter Books. Correspondence of the Inspectors of the Penitentiary, Department of Corrections, ADAH.

11. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, April 11, 1878, to October 11, 1878, SCHS.

12. History of the Penitentiary, Special Message of Gov. Cobb, 1882, pp. 357–58, ADAH.

13. For an excellent examination of the dialogue between Archey and Dawson, see Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000).

14. Ezekiel Archey to R. H. Dawson, Pratt Mines, Jan. 18, 1884, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

15. Curtin, p. 69.

16. Testimony of Jno. D. Goode, Testimony Taken by the Joint Special Committee of the Session of 1880–81 to Enquire into the Condition and Treatment of Convicts of the State (Montgomery, Ala., 1881), ADAH.

17. Curtin, p. 69.

18. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of Commerce, 1910), p. 110.

19. Marjorie Longenecker White, The Birmingham District: An Industrial History and Guide (Birmingham: Birmingham Publishing, 1981).

20. New York Times, Dec. 17, 1882; cited in Curtin, p. 70.

21. Curtin, p. 75.

22. Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, 1880–1882 (Montgomery, Ala.: Barrett & Brown, 1882), ADAH.

23. Cobb, Penitentiary, pp. 357–58.

24. Dawson to B. F. Porter, June 21, 1883; to B. H. Warren, June 30, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

25. Armes, p. 196.

26. Curtin, p. 83.

27. Dawson to Simon O’Neal, Judge of the Probate, Russell County, May 23, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

28. Dawson to Judge Allston, Aug. 27, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

29. Annual Report of Inspectors, 1878.

30. Lewis McCurdy, of Lowndesboro, Ala., telephone interview with the author, Aug. 29, 2003

31. Dawson diary entries, Diary of Reginald Heber Dawson, 1883–1906, July 5, 13, 1883, folder 1, ADAH.

32. Dawson to Simon O’Neal, Sept. 10, 1883, A. S. Williams Collection, Eufaula Athenaeum; Dawson to L. A. J. Cumlie, Sept. 25, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

33. Curtin, pp. 84–88.

34. Convicts at Hard Labor, 1883.

35. Dawson Diary, July 10, 1885, ADAH.

36. Curtin, p. 88.

37. Minutes of the Board of Inspectors, 1883–1913, Department of Corrections, ADAH.

38. Dawson Diary, July 11, 1883, ADAH.

39. Ibid., Nov. 14, 21, 1883.

40. Ibid., May 22, 1887.

41. Convict Legislation and Rules, 1882–1883, ADAH.

42. Testimony of Pratt payroll agent Justin Collins, Nov. 16, 1883, U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Education and Labor, 49th Cong., 2nd Session, Testimony Before the Committee to Investigate the Relations Between Capital and Labor 4:441, cited in Curtin, p. 86.

43. A. T. Henley to R. H. Dawson, Dec. 7, 1883, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

44. Ezekiel Archey to R. H. Dawson, Jan. 18, 1884, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

45. Milner to Dawson, June 10, 1885, Dawson Letter Books, ADAH.

46. Minutes of the Shelby County Commission, December 1880, SCHS.

47. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, April 18, 1879, to Oct. 1, 1888, SCHS.

48. Shelby County Commission Minutes, July 9, 1883, SCHS.

49. Shelby County Commission Minutes, Feb. 2, 1883, SCHS. Elliott received approval for $43.50 for fees related to state cases he had adjudged; warrants totaling $94.65 for work in circuit court cases were also approved.

50. Shelby County Minutes, Feb. 11, 1884, SCHS.

51. J. A. MacKnight, “Columbiana: The Gem of the Hills” (Columbiana, Ala.: Shelby County Sentinel, circa 1907), pp. 5–6.

52. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, Aug. 17, 1884, to May 16, 1886, SCHS.

53. 1880 Census, Bibb County; Bibb County Commission Minutes, July 1881, BCCH.

54. Ibid.

55. Bibb County Commission Minutes, Oct. 8, 1881, BCCH.

56. Bibb County Commission Minutes, Oct. 31, 1881, BCCH.

57. Bibb County Commission Minutes, Feb. 13, 1893; Feb. 11, 1895, BCCH.

CHAPTER IV: GREEN COTTENHAM’S WORLD

1. Allan Nevins, Hamilton Fish: The Inner History of the Grant Administration (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1936), 2: 853–54.

2. Nation, April 5, 1877.

3. C. Vann Woodward, Reunion and Reaction (New York: Little, Brown, 1951).

4. 1890 Census.

5. Second Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1886: Convict Labor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1887).

6. Investigations regarding James M. Smith, Peonage Files, Cases 10935, 16214, 18205, RG60, NA (5280).

7. “Interview with John Hill, April 27, 1938,” Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1941), Georgia Narratives, Vol. 4, Part 2.

8. Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (London: Verso, 1996), p. 48; William Andrew Todd, “Convict Lease System,” New Georgia Encyclopedia, December 2005.

9. Proceedings: Joint Committee of the Senate and House to Investigate the Convict Lease System of Georgia, Vol. 1, 1908, GDAH.

10. Augusta Chronicle, Jan. 3, 1891.

11. Robert Perkinson, “Hell Exploded: Prisoner Writing and the Fall of Convict Leasing in Texas,” unpublished, Sept. 2002.

12. David W. Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Cambridge: Harvard University, 2001), p. 308.

13. Ibid., p. 309.

14. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of Commerce, 1910), p. 422.

15. Ibid., p. 423.

16. Second Biennial Report of the Inspectors of Convicts, Oct. 1, 1886, to Sept. 30, 1888 (Montgomery: W. D. Brown & Co., 1888), ADAH.

17. First Biennial Report of the Inspectors of Convicts, October 1, 1884, to October 1, 1886 (Montgomery: Barrett & Co., 1886), ADAH.

18. Proceedings: Joint Committee of the Senate and House to Investigate the Convict Lease System of Georgia, Vol. 1: 4, 9, GDAH; also Atlanta Constitution, June 24, 1891, p. 6.

19. Second Biennial Report of Inspectors, 1888.

20. Birmingham Daily News, May 23, 1891.

21. Third Biennial Report of the Inspectors of Convicts, Oct. 1, 1888, to Sept. 30, 1890 (Montgomery: Brown Printing, 1890), pp. 14–15.

22. Ibid., p. 15.

23. Ibid., pp. 20–21.

24. Ibid., pp. 242–45.

25. 1904 map of site, BPLA.

26. Third Biennial Report, 1890, pp. 242–45, 262.

27. Ibid., p. 53. Nicholson, the chaplain, boasted of the 197 sermons he had given in the prior year at various convict camps and attendance of more than one hundred regularly for a Sunday school at the Pratt Mines. A separate school at Slope No. 2 prison attracted even larger crowds, he said.

28. Ibid., p. 226.

29. Ibid., pp. 78, 227.

30. Message of Thos. E. Kilby, Governor, Relative to Feeding of Prisoners, Legislative Document No. 3, Alabama Legislature, Jan. 15, 1923 (Montgomery: Brown Printing, 1923), author's collection; Bush citation, p. 5; “Starvation” reference is from Dr. Glenn Andrews, quoted p. 6.; “Pale and anemic” reference from Dr. C. H. Smith, quoted p. 7.

31. Author's analysis of Convict Record, Barbour County, Barbour County Courthouse, Clayton, Ala.

32. G. Bridges to Lewis Grant, Feb. 24, 1891, Sheriff's Loose Papers File, SCHS.

33. Grant to Bridges, undated, Sheriff's Loose Papers File, SCHS.

34. J. McMillan to Grant, undated; P. J. Rogers to Grant, April 9, 1891, Sheriff's Loose Papers Files, SCHS.

35. Postcard dated April 21, 1891, Sheriff's Loose Papers File, SCHS.

36. F. E. Burfitt to Grant, May 26, 1891; J. Rowland to Grant, May 27, 1891; W. B. Fulton to Grant, Nov. 23, 1891, Sheriff's Loose Papers File, SCHS.

37. By the end of 1892, Sheriff Grant had amassed scores of such letters and telegrams, enough to stuff six file folders.

38. P. J. Rogers to L. T. Grant, April 10 and May 6, 1891, SCHS.

39. John Milner, “White Men of Alabama Stand Together,” Pamphlet Collection, 1890, ADAH.

40. Montgomery Advertiser, Feb. 2, 1889.

41. Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 142, citing H. Paul Douglass, Christian Reconstruction in the South (Boston: Pilgrim Press, 1909), pp. 122–23.

42. Bond, pp. 160–61.

43. Ibid., p. 162.

44. Annual Report, Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, Reports to Board of Directors: Dec. 19, 1892. Cahaba Coal Mining Company conveyed to Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad 44,000 acres in lower Cahaba coal basin, fifteen miles of standard gauge railroad track with appurtenant equipment, 467 coke ovens, 575 tenement houses, stores, and telephone lines, and seven coal mines in active operation with a daily capacity of 3,000 tons; Rogers to G. B. McCormack, April 14, 1894, Letterbooks of Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad, 1893–1895, A. S. Williams Collection, Eufaula Athenaeum, Eufaula, Ala.

45. First Biennial Report of Inspectors, 1896.

46. Shelby County Record of Prisoners, Oct. 19, 1890, to Aug. 20, 1906, SCHS.

47. Third Biennial Report of Inspectors, 1890, pp. 54–65.

48. Ibid., pp. 242–45.

49. Thomas D. Parke, “Report by Dr. Thos. D. Parke, MD,” and the subsequent exchange of claims by Judson Davie and Thomas Seddon regarding Sloss- Sheffield's Coalburg prison are compiled in First Biennial Report of Inspectors, 1896.

50. Report of Special Committee to Investigate Convict System, Alabama Legislature, 1897, ADAH.

51. Second Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1896, to August 30, 1898 (Montgomery: Roemer Printing, 1898), ADAH.

52. Fourth Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1900, to August 31, 1902 (Montgomery: Brown Printing, 1904), ADAH.

53. “Jefferson County Circuit Court Convict Docket, 1902–1903,” BPLA.

54. Ibid.

55. Fifth Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1902, to August 31, 1904 (Montgomery, Ala.: Brown Printing, 1904), ADAH.

56. Shelby County Poll Tax Book, 1890, SCHS.

57. 1900 Census, Alabama, Shelby County, ED 120, Precinct No. 4 (June 20, 1900).

CHAPTER V: THE SLAVE FARM OF JOHN PACE

1. Montgomery Advertiser, May 30, 1903, p. 1.

2. 1900 Census, Coosa County, Nixburg beat.

3. Official Proceedings of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Alabama, May 21–Sept. 3, 1901 (Wetampka, Ala.: 1940).

4. Horace Mann Bond, Negro Education in Alabama: A Study in Cotton and Steel (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 175.

5. Affidavit of John Davis, May 9, 1903, RG60, File 76904, EPRRC.

6. Affidavit of J. L. London, May 14, 1903, RG60, File 76904, EPRRC.

7. Davis affidavit.

8. Robert Crew Smith, The Coming of the Railroad, privately published compilation of family historical material, Goodwater, Ala., Goodwater Public Library, Genealogy Section, n.d., p. 103.

9. Dana David White, “An Unforgettable Character,” in Coming of the Railroad, p. 113.

10. Montgomery Advertiser, July 3, 1903.

11. Deed of Property, Known as “Old Dorster Edwards place,” 1900, Tallapoosa County Deed Books, TCC.

12. C. A. Abernathy, “The Birth of Calcis: Founding of Calcis, Turner Brothers, Justice Store, and Our ‘Historical’ House: The Community, Its Historical Importance, and Our Family Ties to It,” copy of unpublished typescript, Nov. 1, 1992, in possession of author.

13. Compilation by the author, based on affidavits in U.S. v. Pace; U.S. v. Franklin; U.S. v. Turner; U.S. v. Cosby; EPRRC.

14. Montgomery Advertiser, May 30, 1903, p. 1.

15. Affidavit of J. W. Pace, May 11, 1903, Department of Justice, File 76904, EPRRC.

16. Sevi Pearson contract, April 28, 1885.

17. Text from April 24, 1902, contract with a man name Patterson: “I further agree to be locked up in the cell at night and that I will be obedient and faithful in the discharge of every duty required of me by the said Pace or his agents, and that should the said Pace advance me anything over and above what he had already furnished me, I agree to work for him under this contract until I have paid for same in full, working at the rate of five dollars per month. I agree that if I fail to comply fully with all the obligations on my part under the contract that I will pay the said Pace for all the cost and trouble he is put to in forcing to comply with the same, including a reasonable attorney's fee for prosecuting or making me company with this contract. I agree that should I fail to comply with all the requirements of this contract on my part that said Pace is hereby authorized to hire me out to any person, firm or corporation in the state of Alabama—at such sum as he may be able to hire me at for a term sufficient to pay him all that I may owe him, including all cost and expense in making me do the work or apprehending and arresting me if I escape.”

18. “Interview with Jim Threat, Nov. 4, 1937,” conducted by Jessie R. Ervin, McAlester, Okla., Oklahoma Writers’ Project, Oklahoma Historical Society.

19. Convict Record, Autauga County Probate Clerk's Office.

20. Booker T. Washington, “Southern Prisons,” Feb. 18, 1886, letter to editor of Southern Workman, BTW Papers, Vol. 2: 1860–1889 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), p. 296, http://www.historycooperative.org/btw.

21. Montgomery Daily Dispatch, Feb. 18, 1886.

22. Tallapoosa County Deed Books, August 1879. Pace paid $200 for two hundred acres in Section 2. On Christmas Eve of 1883, he bought 200 acres for $200 in Township 21. In November of 1886, Pace purchased 130 in Section 19, Township 21, Range 22. October 1886, he paid $200 to buy from J.B. and his wife another portion of Section 28 in Township 21. In 1891, Pace paid $1,200 for four lots facing the main street in Dadeville, Broadnax Street, one block away from the antebellum county courthouse. Two years later, he bought a half interest in two more lots on Broadnax, for $200. In 1893, he paid $1,000 for several lots in Dadeville.

23. As part of a mining venture, late in May 1894 Pace paid for a half interest in the minerals contained in a section of Section 16, Township 21.

24. Affidavit of J. M. Kennedy, May 30, 1903, File 76904, EPRRC.

25. Ibid.

26. Tallapoosa Voice, April 7, 1892.

27. Reprinted from Alliance Herald.

28. Ibid., Oct. 6, 1892.

29. Ibid., July 7, 1892: “The negro politicians have all been in town this week. A majority of them will vote for Kolb for governor…. Stand firm to the nominees and break down this effort that is being made to have another ’80 campaign in our county. A majority of the Democrats of our county have named their choice for officers—if you are a democrat vote that ticket.; there will be a picnic on R.S. Patillos’ place in Red Ridge beat on the 20th of July. Everybody invited to come. The men who have suffered their names to go before the people as independent candidates have deliberately committed political suicide. Politically speaking the four men put out on the 5th are as dead as door nails—funeral ceremonies will occur on the first Monday in August.”

30. 1900 Census, Alabama, Tallapoosa County, Red Ridge District, pp. 1–27.

31. 1900 Census, Alabama, Tallapoosa County, Red Ridge District, p. 12. Mary Smith was initially entered as a boarder but changed later to “servant,” thirtyseven years old, married ten years, two children, listed as a cook; Maurice Cunningham, initially entered as boarder but changed later to “servant,” nine years old, water carrier with no schooling and unable to read or write; S. J. Harriet, convict, twenty-eight; William Riddle, convict, twenty-eight years old; Archer Wiggins, convict, thirty-two years old, married five years; Jack Armour, convict, twenty.

32. Warren S. Reese Jr. to Attorney General, March 22, 1905, Department of Justice, Peonage Files, ff 5280-3, RG60, NA.

33. Affidavits, 1903, File 76904, EPRRC.

34. Affidavit of Joe Patterson, May 7, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

35. Affidavit of M. J. Scroggins, undated, Peonage Files, EPRRC. Dadeville Mayor's Docket, Miscellaneous Papers, Peonage Files, File 76904, EPRRC.

36. Affidavit of Wheeler Stone, 1903, File 76904, EPRRC.

37. Compilation by the author of personal ledgers, bank records, and sworn statements of African Americans who were seized and white men who captured them.

38. Pace affidavit: “I paid …for him and I kept him ten months.” Thompson's mother eventually appeared and paid to set her son free. “There was no commitment paper from any court given me at that time,” Pace said.

39. Affidavit of Note Turke, June 30, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

40. Town of Goodwater, Acts of Board of Aldermen, Sept. 2, 1904.

41. 1900 Census, Laray A. Grogan, born May 1872, with a wife, daughter, six, son, five, son, three.

42. Affidavit of Dock Crenshaw, May 25, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

43. Affidavit of Charley Williams, May 25, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

44. Affidavit of Pat Hill, May 12, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

CHAPTER VI: SLAVERY IS NOT A CRIME

1. Montgomery Advertiser, May 27, 1903.

2. Alabama voted to secede January 11, 1861; the Confederate Constitutional Convention convened in Montgomery; Jefferson Davis was sworn in on the state capitol portico; the Confederate capital moved to Richmond, Virginia, in July 1861.

3. Charles W. Chesnutt, “Peonage, or the New Slavery,” Voice of the Negro 1 (September 1904): 394–97.

4. Booker T. Washington, “To the Colored Citizens of Alabama,” Tuskegee Student, Feb. 28, 1895, p. 2, BTW Papers.

5. Official Programme of Daily Events, Cotton States and International Exposition, Dec. 30, 1895 (Atlanta: C. P. Byrd), author's collection.

6. Theodore Roosevelt to Booker T. Washington, Washington, D.C., Nov. 9, 1901, BTW Papers.

7. TR to BTW, July 9, 1901, BTW Papers.

8. TR to BTW, March 21, 1901, BTW Papers.

9. Theodore Roosevelt, “Expansion of the White Races,” Speech to Methodist Episcopal Church celebration of the African Diamond Jubilee, Washington, D.C., Jan. 18, 1909.

10. TR to BTW, Sept. 14, 1901, BTW Papers.

11. BTW to TR, Oct. 2, 1901, BTW Papers.

12. C. N. Dorsette to BTW, May 31, 1890, telegram, BTW Papers.

13. Thomas Goode Jones to BTW, June 28, 1901, BTW Papers.

14. BTW to TR, Oct. 2, 1901, BTW Papers.

15. William A. Sinclair, The Aftermath of Slavery (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1905), pp. 187–90.

16. Ibid.

17. Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2002), p. 203.

18. Dadeville Spot Cash, March 13, 1903, reprinting editorial of Birmingham Ledger.

19. Ibid.

20. Ibid.

21. Sinclair, pp. 188–89.

22. New York Times, June 5, 1903.

23. Reese to Parsons, Jan. 27 and April 11, 1903, RG60, NA; typescript, “The Slave Traffic Today,” Appointment and Credentials Files, Dept. of Justice, RG60, NA.

24. Jones to Philander C. Knox, March 21, 1903, ff 5280-03, RG60, NA: Sir: Some witnesses before the Grand Jury here developed the fact that in Shelby county in this District, and in Coosa county in the Middle district, a systematic scheme of depriving negroes of their liberty, and hiring them out, has been practiced for some time.

The plan is to accuse the negro of some petty offense, and then require him, in order to escape conviction, to enter into an agreement to pay his accuser so much money, and sign a contract, under the terms of which his bondsmen can hire him out until he pays a certain sum. The negro is made to believe he is a convict, and treated as such. It is said that thirty negroes were in the stockade at one time.

25. United States v. William Eberhart, indictment, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Georgia, April 19, 1898, Dept. of Justice, RG60, EPRRC; Atlanta Journal, April 21, 1898.

26. Angier to Attorney General W. H. H. Miller, April 19, 1898, RG60, NA.

27. United States v. Eberhart, Jan. 25, 1899 (127 F. 254), District Judge Newman.

28. Angier to Attorney General W. H. H. Miller, Jan. 17, 1899, RG60, NA.

29. Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), p. 3.

30. Eagan to Attorney General Knox, July 13, 1901, RG60, NA.

31. Daniel, pp. 6–13.

32. Reese to Knox, April 7, 1903, ff 5280-03, #5664, RG60, NA.

33. Thomas R. Roulhac to Knox, April 9, 1903, ff 5280-03, #5762, RG60, NA:

The late Grand Jury at Birmingham Ala. made a careful investigation of the complaints as to the attempt to deprive citizens of African descent of their liberty and I am gratified to state that this investigation was not only closely and carefully made, but that the desire was universal among all its members, composed of as excellent material, in intelligence and character, as the district or State affords, to vindicate the State from such unlawful and disgraceful proceedings, and to bring to punishment every man who by the proof was shown to have had any connection with it.

Indictments were found against nine persons, all that the testimony connected with the transaction but enough was disclosed to show that the same or like systems prevailed in other districts in the state. I do not think the present the most propitious time for employing the services of a secret Service operative. In my judgment after a comparatively short lapse of time, his investigation will not have so much attention attracted to them as they would have if begun immediately, and I think the participants and those who can impart any information will be more likely to do so when the present flutter has somewhat subsided.

It is equally gratifying to state that the said Grand Jury were aroused by an attempt to intimidate one of the witnesses before them, and that they promptly returned indictments against all who had any part in anything of that character. Indictments were found against all of these, arrests were promptly made, and such of them as were able to make bond were admitted to bail in the sum of the Two thousand Dollars each…. One was committed to jail in Birmingham….

No effort will be spared to obtain a conviction of all of these parties, and it has been reported to us that already the effect has been most salutary [sic] resulting in the discharge of a number whose confinement has been illegal, or of questionable legality, and their restoration to liberty.

34. Affidavit of L. E. White, undated, File 76909, EPRRC.

35. Reese to Knox, April 25, 1903, ff 5280-03, RG60, NA.

36. Asa Stratton to Attorney General, Feb. 18, 1897, Records Relating to the Appointment of Federal Judges, Marshals and Attorneys, W. S. Reese Jr. file, #068849, RG60, NA.

37. Marielou Armstrong Cory, “History of the Ladies Memorial Association,” 1902, http://www.monumentpreservation.com/monument/history.html.

CHAPTER VII: THE INDICTMENTS

1. Montgomery Advertiser, June 9, 1903, p. 7.

2. Reese to Knox, June 15, 1903, RG60, NA.

3. Affidavit of Paul Hoffman, May 8, 1903; affidavit of Si Caldwell, May 9, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

4. Davis affidavit.

5. Affidavit of J. G. Dunbar, May 11, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

6. Affidavit of J. L. Purifoy, May 13, 1903; affidavit of Jim Caldwell, May 9, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

7. Affidavit of D. M. White, certifying copy of Mayor's Court Docket, May 29, 1903, File 76904, EPRRC.

8. Receipt, April 24, 1902, File 76904, Tallapoosa County Bank, EPRRC.

9. Purifoy affidavit.

10. White affidavit.

11. Affidavit of Esau Williams, May 25, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

12. Affidavit of Glennie Helms, May 25, 1903; affidavit of Dave Johnson, May 25, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

13. Johnson affidavit.

14. Helms affidavit.

15. E. Williams affidavit.

16. Dec. 1, 1955.

17. Affidavit of John W. Pace, May 11, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

18. Ibid.

19. Affidavit of Fletch Turner, May 12, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

20. Affidavit of George Cosby, May 15, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

21. Affidavit of J. M. Kennedy, May 30, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

22. Dunbar affidavit.

23. Affidavit of G. B. Walker, May 12, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

24. Affidavit of Mat Davis, May 9, 1903, File 76909; affidavit of Charles Davis, May 9, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

25. Kennedy affidavit.

26. Ibid.

27. Affidavit of J. W. Havalson, June 29, 1903, File 76909, EPRRC.

28. Montgomery Advertiser, May 30, 1903, p. 1.

29. Ibid.

30. Ibid.

31. Cleveland Gazette, Jan. 24, 1903, p. 2.

32. New York Evening Post, May 26, 1903, no page.

33. Montgomery Advertiser, June 13, 1903, p. 4.

34. Ibid., July 7, 1903, p. 4.

35. Ibid., June 9, 1903, p. 4.

36. Dadeville Spot Cash, June 5, 1903, p. 1.

37. New York Herald, June 8, 1903.

38. Montgomery Advertiser, June 12, 1903, p. 3.

39. Sinclair, p. 245.

40. Attorney General to Roosevelt, June 8, 1903, Executive and Congressional Letter Book 64, p. 341, NA.

41. Reese to Knox, June 10, 1903, RG60, NA.

42. Stanley W. Finch, Examiner, to Attorney General, Feb. 18, 1904, “Report on W. S. Reese Jr.,” ff 5280-03, RG60, NA.

43. 1900 Census, 1870 Census, 1860 Census.

44. Montgomery Advertiser, June 10, 1903, p. 3.

45. Judge Thomas G. Jones, “Charge to Jury,” June 15, 1903, ff 5280-03, RG60, NA.

46. Prattville Progress, June 26, 1903, p. 2.

47. Birmingham Age-Herald, June 17, 1903.

48. Montgomery Advertiser, June 18, 1903, p. 4.

49. Reese to Knox, June 15, 1903, ff 5380-03, RG60, pp. 1–4, NA.

50. Ibid., p. 4.

51. Ibid., pp. 4–6.

52. Ibid., pp. 7–8.

53. Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), p. 46.

54. Reese to Knox, June 15, 1903, p. 8.

55. Nation, June 11, 1903, p. 1.

56. Montgomery Advertiser, June 23, 1903, p. 7.

57. Ibid., June 25, 1903.

58. Dadeville Spot Cash, June 19, 1903, quoting Atlanta Constitution.

59. Montgomery Advertiser, June 25, 1903, p. 4.

60. Ibid., June 13, 1903, p. 4.

61. Ibid., June 19, 1903, p. 9.

CHAPTER VIII: A SUMMER OF TRIALS, 1903

1. Stanley W. Finch to Frank Strong, General Agent, Department of Justice, June 23, 1903, Peonage Files (5280), ff 9927, RG60, NA.

2. Affidavit of Owen Green, no date, File 76909, EPRRC.

3. 1860 Census (Pace month of birth: October 1853).

4. Macon Telegraph, June 25, 1903; Speer to Attorney General, June 25, 1903, EPRRC.

5. Montgomery Advertiser, June 28, 1903, p. 3.

6. Ibid., June 30, 1903, p. 2.

7. Ibid., July 1, 1908, p. 1.

8. Reese to Attorney General, June 30, 1903, ff 10157, RG60, NA.

9. Edward M. Adams to John E. Wilkie, Chief of Treasury Secret Service investigators, June 24, 1904, ff 13098, RG60, NA.

10. Montgomery Advertiser, July 5, 1903.

11. Affidavit of Fletcher Turner, May 12, 1903, EPRRC.

12. Helms affidavit.

13. Montgomery Advertiser, July 8, 1903.

14. Ibid., July 11, 1903.

15. Ibid.; New York Times, July 11, 1903.

16. New York Times, July 13, 1903.

17. Montgomery Advertiser, July 14, 1903, p. 1; Dadeville Spot Cash, July 17, 1903; New York Times, July 25, 1903, p. 2.

18. Montgomery Advertiser, July 21, 1903, p. 1.

CHAPTER IX: A RIVER OF ANGER

1. Reese, the prosecutor, wrote to newspapers in response that Heflin had grossly understated the facts alleged in the indictments. Reese statement, July 21, 1903, Miscellaneous Papers, Peonage Cases, File 76904, EPRRC. Heflin replied, denouncing Reese, and Judges Jones and Speer in Alabama and Georgia, wrapping his condemnation in a defense of the jury system:

I care not whether the Judge be named Jones or Speer; whether he lives in Alabama or Ohio. My contention is that no judge has the right, legal or moral, to coerce a jury into finding a verdict to his liking, that the jurors are the sole judges of the facts and they must find the verdict according to their own conviction and consciences that they are entitled to protection from insults and abuse of the presiding judge. We cannot be too strenuous in our efforts to guard the dignity and integrity of the jury system of our country…. It was only when, according to my honest convictions, he had invaded the sacred province of the jury, had used language if denunciation and intimidation that no judicial authority on earth could warrant, and had set a precedent fraught with the gravest danger to that ancient institution that great bulwark of the people's rights and liberties, the “right of trial by jury,” that I excised the right that is mine as an American citizen to criticize his official conduct, and to speak publicly my views concerning this most remarkable occurrence in Alabama. Montgomery Advertiser, July 22, 1903, p. 2.

2. Ernest H. Hill to Reese, July 15, 1903, Miscellaneous Papers, Peonage Files, File 76904, EPRRC.

3. Thomas Dixon Jr., The Leopard's Spots: A Romance of the White Man's Burden (New York: P. F. Collier, 1902), pp. 381–84.

4. Thomas Nelson Page, The Negro: The Southerner's Problem (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904), p. 64.

5. Montgomery Advertiser, April 25, 1903, p. 1.

6. Ibid.; Nation, Aug. 19, 1903, p. 1.

7. William Hannibal Thomas, The American Negro (New York: Macmillan, 1901), cited in Page, p. 82.

8. Montgomery Advertiser, April 26, 1903, p. 1.

9. Dadeville Spot Cash, May 15, 1903.

10. Montgomery Advertiser, May 21, 1903, p. 4.

11. Ibid., June 5, 1903, quoting Columbus Enquirer-Sun, p. 4.

12. William A. Sinclair, The Aftermath of Slavery (Boston: Small, Maynard & Company, 1905), pp. 221–22.

13. Phillips Verner Bradford and Harvey Blume, Ota: The Pygmy in the Zoo (New York: St. Martin's, 1992).

14. Montgomery Advertiser, June 10, 1903, p. 1.

15. Proceedings: Joint Committee of the Senate and House to Investigate the Convict Lease System of Georgia, Vol. 1, transcripts of first meeting, Gaither testimony, pp. 187–97, GDAH.

16. New York Times, July 21, 1903.

17. Montgomery Advertiser, April 10, 1903, p. 1.

18. J. E. Sistrunk to Department of Justice, July 6, 1903, Peonage Files, EPRRC.

19. Montgomery Advertiser, April 16, 1903, p. 1.

20. Ibid., May 17, 1903, p. 1.

21. Ibid., May 16, 1903, p. 1.

22. New York Times, July 5, 1903.

23. Associated Press, July 5, 1903.

24. New York Times, July 13, 14, 1903.

25. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 (New York: Dover, 1994), pp. 23, 65.

CHAPTER X: THE DISAPPROBATION OF GOD

1. New York Times, July 25, 1903.

2. Dadeville Spot Cash, July 31, 1903.

3. Ibid., Aug. 14, 1903, publishing Tallapoosa County Grand Jury report, July 27, 1903.

4. Ibid., Aug. 28, 1903: “W. W. Pearson, who was one of the attorneys for the Cosbys, says he will petition Judge Jones to commute their sentence. It will be remembered that they plead guilty to charges of peonage against them and were sent to the U.S. Penitentiary in Atlanta to serve a year and a day. It is agreed that their penalty is too severe and the late deliverances of the court show it to be inclined to mercy and it is thought that the petition will meet with favor…. The citizens of Tallapoosa county are signing petitions for the release of the Cosbys now in prison in Atlanta …claimed that the petition will go up with at least 3000 names signed to it.”

5. Montgomery Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1903: “The state convict inspectors are surprised at the county commissioners of Tallapoosa county in awarding the convict labor contract of that county to J. W. Pace. Pace had the county convicts at the time he was arrested for peonage. He is now under sentence of five years but the sentence has been suspended by Judge Jones of the US court.”

6. Nation, Aug. 19, 1903, p. 1; New York Times, Nov. 23, 1903.

7. M. D. Wickersham to Attorney General, Sept. 21, 1903, File 5280, ff 14901, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

8. Catherine McRee Carter, “History of Kinderlou, Georgia, 1860–1940,” unpublished typescript, December 1940, in possession of author.

9. “The New Slavery in the South, An Autobiography,” Independent, February 25, 1904, pp. 409–14.

10. Affidavit of Henry C. Dickey, Nov. 24, 1903, EPRRC.

11. Kinsey File, Department of Justice, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

12. Affidavit of Edward McRee, Nov. 24, 1903, EPRRC.

13. Opinion of Judge Emory Speer, U.S. v. McClellan and Crawley, March 17, 1904, EPRRC.

14. Akerman to Attorney General, March 27, 1905, EPRRC.

15. Sternfeld to Reese, Nov. 12, 1903, ff 5280-17119, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

16. L. R. Farmer to Attorney General, Nov. 17, 1903, ff 3098-1902, Peonage Files, RG60, NA:

Morganton N.C., Dear Sir, i write you for information i have a little girl that has been kidnapped from me and is now under bondage in Ga and I cant get her out only her but no of others i want ask you is it law for people to whip (col) people and keep them and not allow them to leave without a pass my reason for writing you is the people in Ga wont do any thing with him and if the negroes tell any thing they will beat them to death and they are a fraid to testfie against him because cary them write back and beat them to death and some of them has beened killed trying to get away from their and i got a little girl there and get her a way from their if you could inform me please to write me how can tell me the proper one over p.s. you pleas ans me at once this little of mine is begging me to come after and i write you for information i have tried to get outte a write of habeaus corpus and that could not get her you will find stamp for the ans

Rev. L.R. Farmer pastor of Baps of this place

17. Attorney General to Farmer, Nov. 18, 1903, Peonage Files, ff 3098-1902, RG60, NA.

18. New York Times, Dec. 4, 1904.

19. Wilcox Progressive Era, Jan. 14, 1904, transcribed by Stephen Lee, Dec. 2003, ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/al/wilcox/vitals/marriages/gmr12melton.txt.

20. J. R. Adams to Attorney General, Feb. 23, 1904, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

21. Ibid.

22. U.S. Commissioner to W. H. Armbrecht, Feb. 13, 1904, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

23. Galveston News, Dec. 27, 1903; Atlanta Constitution, Dec. 29–31, 1903.

24. Nation, Jan. 14, 1904; BTW to Edward Henry Clement, Dec. 30, 1903, BTW Papers.

25. Finch to Attorney General, Feb. 18, 1904, File 5280-03, ff 29562, RG60, NA.

26. Reese to Attorney General, March 2, 1904, File 5280-03, ff 29606, RG60, NA.

27. Indictment of Alex D. Stephens, Miscellaneous Papers, Peonage Files, File 76904, EPRRC.

28. Akerman to Attorney General, April 14, 1904, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

29. Acting Attorney General to Reese, June 24, 1904, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

30. Reese to Attorney General, Aug. 23, 1904, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

31. Clyatt v. U.S., 197 U.S. 207 (1905).

32. Jamison v. Wimbish, 130 F. 351, 355–57 (S.D. Ga. 1904) (Speer, J.).

33. Reese to Attorney General, March 25, 1905; Attorney General to Reese, March 27, 1905; File 5280-03, ff 53321, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

34. Reese to Attorney General, March 27, 1905, File 5280-03, ff 53574, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

35. “Susanna” to Jones, July 3, 1905, Miscellaneous Papers, Peonage Files, File 76904, EPRRC. Susanna said a store clerk named C. L. Waldrup had detailed information on the slavery ring; one of the black laborers being held was Dick Gray, the same name of one of the men captured in the John Pace slavery network five years earlier. Susanna didn't know the names of others, but said all were held against their will, tracked down if they attempted to leave, and forced back to the turpentine operation at gunpoint.

36. Reese to W. H. Moody, March 27, 1905, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

37. Reese to BTW, Feb. 1, 1905, BTW Papers.

38. Attorney General to Reese, April 5, 1905, File 5280-03, ff 53574, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

39. Atlanta Constitution, March 18, 1905, p. 3.

40. Ibid., Oct. 29, 1905, p. 2; Aug. 12, 1906, p. 6.

41. Ibid., Oct. 26, 1905.

42. Ibid., Oct. 31, 1905, p. 2; Nov. 1, p. 5.

43. Author's collection.

44. Atlanta Constitution, March 16, 1906, p. 7.

45. Ibid., Nov. 6, 1905, p. 7.

46. Ibid., Oct. 16, 1905, p. 1; Oct. 29, 1905, p. 2.

CHAPTER XI: SLAVERY AFFIRMED

1. David Levering Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868–1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), pp. 354–59, 436–39.

2. R. H. Ellis, “The Calhoun School, Miss Charlotte Thorn's ‘Lighthouse on the Hill’ in Lowndes County, Alabama,” Alabama Review 37, no. 3 (1984): 183–201.

3. Jonathan Grossman, “Black Studies in the Department of Labor, 1897–1907,” Monthly Labor Review, June 1974.

4. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W. E. B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), pp. 226–77.

5. Du Bois to Charles P. Neill, Nov. 2, 1906, Du Bois Papers, University of Massachusetts, cited in Lewis, W. E. B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, p. 354.

6. Du Bois, Autobiography, p. 227.

7. Atlanta Constitution, Sept. 20, 21, 22, 1906.

8. For the definitive account of the Atlanta race riot, see Mark Bauerlein, Negrophobia: A Race Riot in Atlanta, 1906 (San Francisco: Encounter, 2001).

9. Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 12, 1906, p. 7.

10. Lewis, p. 355.

11. Du Bois, Autobiography, p. 227.

12. W. E. B. Du Bois, The Quest of the Silver Fleece (Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co., 1911).

13. Jamison v. Wimbish; Atlanta Constitution, Oct. 17, 1905.

14. Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), p. 62.

CHAPTER XII: NEW SOUTH RISING

1. Born Sept. 1885, 1900 Census.

2. Fourth Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1900, to August 31, 1902 (Montgomery: Brown Printing, 1902), ADAH.

3. Register of Prisoners Committed to the County Jail of Shelby County, 096-1, p. 172, SCHS; Schedule of Convicts obtained by Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. from Shelby County, second quarter 1904, SCHS.

4. J. A. MacKnight, “Columbiana: The Gem of the Hills,” c. 1907, published by the Shelby County Sentinel, SCHS.

5. In June 1892, George W. Vines, superintendent of town schools, posted a notice inviting “all white persons interested in the welfare of the Dadeville High School” to assemble at the courthouse to select new leadership of the public school system.

6. Photograph file, SCHS.

7. MacKnight, p. 20.

8. Will Lewis was taken before Judge A. P. Longshore in February 1908. He had taken $25 to sign a contract in the fall of 1906 agreeing to work in another local lime kiln, this one owned by C. L. O’Neal. Three months later, he tried to leave, and O’Neal took out a warrant for false pretense.

9. “Contract on Confession of Judgment Record,” 1903–1913, SCHS.

10. Register of Prisoners Committed to Jail, 1890–1906, SCHS, analysis by author.

11. “Contract on Confessions of Judgment Record.”

12. MacKnight's publicity pamphlet for Columbiana captured a full portrait of the town's mercantile, legal, and political elite, all of which benefited in some respect from the county's active trade in forced labor. D. R. McMillan, predecessor of Longshore as probate judge, was another of the town's most prominent attorneys. The son of a cotton planter ruined by the Civil War, he studied law during Reconstruction and arrived in Columbiana in 1886 to form a law practice with former Alabama governor Rufus Cobb. By 1907, he was in partnership with J. J. Haynes, the rising young man among lawyers in the province. The people of Columbiana were particularly proud of their new “free school,” funded by the town council and available to any white children living in the city limits. Milner & Armstrong operated a steam-powered sawmill near the rail line on the outskirts of Columbiana. Rufus Lester had arrived in Shelby as a young farmer and then taken work in a general store, weighing sugar and measuring out calico for yeoman families. He had risen to become owner of the business and a major buyer of cotton for mills he owned. John S. Pitts was the county's longtime tax collector, the right-hand man in politics of Judge Longshore. W. R. A. Milner, deputy to Sheriff Fulton, was a respected Confederate veteran.

13. Sixth Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1904, to August 31, 1906 (Montgomery, 1906), ADAH.

14. Fifth Biennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1902, to August 31, 1904 (Montgomery, Ala.: Brown Printing, 1904), ADAH.

15. Sixth Biennial Report, 1906.

16. Ibid.

17. W. David Lewis, Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1994), p. 310.

18. Birmingham Age-Herald, Aug. 2, 1900, cited in Lewis, Sloss Furnaces, p. 251.

19. Justin Fuller, “History of Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad Company, 1852–1907” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1966), pp. 273–74.

20. Birmingham Age-Herald, Aug. 2, 1900, cited in Lewis, Sloss Furnaces, p. 251.

21. W. F. Tyler to Eagle & Phoenix Mfg. Co., Oct. 18, 1899, original in possession of author.

22. Erskine Ramsey to H. C. Frick, Aug. 7, 1903, File 1.1.11, p. 88, BPLA.

23. 1900 Census, Jefferson County, Precinct 29.

24. Fuller, p. 331.

25. Wall Street Journal, May 16, 1905.

26. Annual Report, U.S. Steel Corp., Dec. 31, 1907; C. A. Abernathy, “The Birth of Calcis: Founding of Calcis, Turner Brothers, Justice Store, and Our ‘Historical’ House: The Community, Its Historical Importance, and Our Family Ties to It,” copy of unpublished typescript, Nov. 1, 1992, in possession of author.

27. Fuller, pp. 148–52; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces, p. 290.

28. Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1990), pp. 124–28; Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex (New York: Modern Library, 2002), pp. 497–99; Lewis, Sloss Furnaces, pp. 288–93; Fuller, pp. 153–54.

29. Agreement entered into by J. Craig Smith, President of the Board of Convict Inspectors of the State of Alabama and Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Company, Nov. 26, 1907, copy in possession of author.

CHAPTER XIII: THE ARREST OF GREEN COTTENHAM

1. Analysis by the author of charges and sentencings in central and southern Alabama, 1900–1910.

2. Report of Persons Sentenced to Hard Labor for Shelby County, March 1908, SCHS.

3. Ibid.

4. Criminal Court Records, Bibb County and Shelby County, Ala.

5. Report of Shelby County Grand Jury, Spring Term, 1908, published in Shelby County People's Advocate, April 23, 1908.

6. Photographs on file, SCHS.

7. 1900 Census.

8. References appear frequently in archival material of women sexually abused by police officials and, in the case of female prisoners, other convicts. For the most complete treatment of the conditions of female prisoners, see Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama, 1865–1900 (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), pp. 113–29.

9. Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), p. 269, citing Statement of Pardons, Paroles and Commutations Granted by Cole L. Blease, 1913 (Columbia, S.C.: 1914).

CHAPTER XIV: ANATOMY OF A SLAVE MINE

1. Shelby M. Harrison, “A Cash-Nexus for Crime”; “The Human Side of Large Outputs, Steel and Steel Workers in Six American States, Part IV, Birmingham District: Labor Conservation,” both in The Survey, Jan. 6, 1912, pp. 1526–47.

2. Ramsey to G. B. McCormack, General Manager, on Pratt Division, Feb. 13, 1896, Erskine Ramsey Papers, File 1.1.1D, BPLA.

3. TCI company photographs, in possession of author.

4. Miles College: The First Hundred Years (Charleston, S.C.: Arcadia, 2005), pp. 15–18.

5. Birmingham Age-Herald, Feb. 21, 1908.

6. “County Convict Contracts,” internal memorandum of Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co., Aug. 28, 1908, copy in possession of author.

7. Quadrennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, Sept. 1, 1910 to Aug. 31, 1914 (Montgomery: 1914), ADAH.

8. “Statement of State and County Convicts at Pratt Mines Division as of Month of August, 1908,” U.S. Steel Corp., copy in possession of author.

9. Sheriff's Prisoners Register (1908), Shelby County, SCHS.

10. Tennessee Coal, Iron & Railroad Co. photograph, labeled “Muscoda Ore Mines, Hospital in Use in 1901 and 1902,” in possession of author.

11. John N. Reynolds, Twin Hells (Chicago: M. A. Donahue & Co., 1890), pp. 86–87.

12. Alvaran Snow Allen, “The Story of a Lie: By Convict No. 2939, Himself 15 Years in Prison,” pamphlet printed by Mission Printing Company, Tulsa, c. 1926, in possession of author.

13. Harvey R. Hougen, “The Impact of Politics and Prison Industry on the General Management of the Kansas State Penitentiary, 1883–1909,” 1977, citing Carl “Cork” Arnold, A Life Prisoner, 1906.

14. Allen, “Story of a Lie.”

15. Ibid.; Reynolds, p. 94.

16. Interview by the author of Willie Clark, 2001, 2002, 2003.

17. “Registry of Convict Deaths,” Quadrennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1906, to August 31, 1910 (Montgomery: Brown Printing, 1910), ADAH.

18. Brian Kelly, Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908–21 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), pp. 1–8.

19. Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 6, 1908, p. 2.

20. Death Certificate—County Convict: Green Cunningham [sic], Aug. 15, 1908.

CHAPTER XV: EVERYWHERE WAS DEATH

1. Atlanta Constitution, July 13, 1908, p. 1; July 15, 1908.

2. “The Lynching Century: African Americans Who Died in Racial Violence in the United States, 1865–1965,” Tuskegee Institute Lynching Inventory, www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Base/8507/NLists.htm; Atlanta Constitution, July 16, 1908.

3. Atlanta Constitution, July 29, 1908, p. 5.

4. Ibid., July 30, 1908, p. 1.

5. Ibid., Aug. 2, 1908.

6. New York Times, Aug. 16, 1908, p. 1.

7. Brian Kelly, Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908–21 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001), pp. 23–24.

8. Ibid.

9. Birmingham Age-Herald, Nov. 11, 1908, p. 1.

10. Ibid., Nov. 18, 1908, p. 5.

11. Quadrennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1906, to August 31, 1910 (Montgomery: Brown Printing, 1910), ADAH.

12. Jefferson County Coroner's Record, Preliminary Investigation Reports, Record of B. L. Brasher, Coroner; Office of Coroner/Medical Examiner, Jefferson County, Ala.

13. Sentenced to life for first-degree murder, his first criminal charge.

14. Ethel Armes, The Story of Coal and Iron in Alabama (Birmingham: Chamber of Commerce, 1910), pp. 493–95; James Saxon Childers, Erskine Ramsey: His Life and Achievements (New York: Cartwright & Ewing, 1942), pp. 160–65, 264.

15. Montgomery Advertiser, April 12, 1911.

16. Jefferson County Coroner's Record, Preliminary Investigation Reports, Jefferson County Coroner's Office.

17. Atlanta Constitution, Aug. 7, 1908, p. 1.

18. Clayton Record, Jan. 20, 1911, p. 1.

19. Barbour County Jail Registry, undated, Sheriff R. B. Teal, Barbour County Courthouse.

20. Clayton Record, April 28, 1911, p. 1.

21. A prison inspector report from 1915 says building prior to 1913 had been condemned.

22. Barbour County Jail Registry, 1911; Clayton Record, May 12, 1911, p. 1.

23. Jail Registry, 1911; author's analysis.

24. Jail Registry, 1911, Barbour County Courthouse.

25. Clayton Record, May 31, 1912, p. 1.

26. State Convicts Descriptive Record, 1913–1916, Vol. 8, Alabama Department of Corrections, ADAH; Demas, p. 175; Miller, p. 488.

27. State Convicts Descriptive Record, 1913–1916, Vol. 8, Alabama Department of Corrections, ADAH.

28. Registry of Convict Deaths.

29. Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Elbert M. Gary: The Story of Steel (New York: D. Appleton, 1925), pp. 310–11.

30. Transcript of Public Investigation into Affairs and Conduct of the Convict Department, March 1913, Vol. 2, Alabama Department of Corrections, ADAH, testimony of Walker Percy, pp. 690–91.

31. Ibid., pp. 693–98.

32. Internal U.S. Steel legal memo, May 1913, in possession of author.

33. Transcript: Public Investigation, testimony of E. H. Coxe, pp. 675–77.

34. Ibid., Coxe to Oakley, Sept. 25, 1911.

35. “Report of Persons Sentenced to Hard Labor for Shelby County,” December 1913, SCHS.

CHAPTER XVI: ATLANTA, THE SOUTH’S FINEST CITY

1. Twentieth Annual Report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1905: Convict Labor (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1906), p. 206.

2. Atlanta Constitution, July 11, 1908, p. 1.

3. Ibid., July 23, 1908.

4. Proceedings: Joint Committee, Daniel Long testimony, pp. 501–5, GDAH.

5. Proceedings: Joint Committee, Susan Long testimony, pp. 506–9, GDAH.

6. Proceedings: Joint Committee, R. A. Keith testimony, pp. 162–87, GDAH.

7. Proceedings: Joint Committee,Will Wynne testimony, pp. 1582–91, GDAH.

8. James W. English Personality File, AHC; also, Clement A. Evans, Confederate Military History (Atlanta: 1899), 4: 635–38.

9. Memoirs of Georgia (Atlanta: Southern Historical Association, 1895), Vol. 1, Ch. 4, pp. 766–69.

10. Proceedings: Joint Committee, James W. English testimony, pp. 1209–40, GDAH; Annual Statement of Brickyard Account, June 1, 1906, to May 31, 1907, Chattahoochee Brick Company File, AHG.

11. Proceedings: Joint Committee, Arthur Moore testimony, no page number, July 23, 1908; Ed Strickland testimony, p. 479, GDAH.

12. Proceedings: Joint Committee, J. A. Cochran testimony, pp. 64–105, GDAH.

13. Ibid.; Atlanta Constitution, July 24, 1908, p. 1.

14. Alex Lichtenstein, Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South (London: Verso, 1996), p. 122.

15. Joel Hurt to J. W. Callahan, Dec. 24, 1904, and Dec. 29, 1904, GDAH.

16. J. W. Callahan to Hurt, Jan. 6, 1905, GDAH.

17. Hurt to Callahan, Jan. 5, 1905, GDAH.

18. Proceedings: Joint Committee, Joel Hurt testimony, pp. 418–48.

19. Proceedings: Joint Committee, Jake Moore testimony, Aug. 4, 1908, GDAH.

20. Proceedings: Joint Committee, George Hurt testimony, pp. 724–42, GDAH.

21. Ibid.

22. Atlanta Constitution, July 13, 1908.

23. Ibid., Aug. 3, 4, 5, 1908.

24. Annual Statement of Brickyard Account, June 1, 1909, to May 31, 1910, Chattahoochee Brick Company File, AHC.

25. Matthew J. Mancini, One Dies, Get Another: Convict Leasing in the American South, 1866–1928 (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), p. 221.

26. H. Gibson to E. J. Parsons, May 7, 1906; Thomas Jones to Attorney General, May 11, 1906; E. J. Parsons to Attorney General, June 18, 1906, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

27. Gibson to Parsons, May 7, 1906, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

28. Parsons to Attorney General, May 11, 1906, File 50-87, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

29. Parsons to Attorney General, June 18, 1906, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

30. Johnson to Department of Justice, March 30, 1907, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

31. Parsons to Attorney General, Sept. 18, 1907, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

32. Jones to Parsons, Dec. 24, 1907; “Law Abiding Citizen” to Jones, Dec. 19, 1907; Parsons to Attorney General, Dec. 26, 1907, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

33. W. Armbrecht to Attorney General, Dec. 22, 1908, File 50-92, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

34. Armbrecht to Attorney General, January 1909, RG60, NA.

35. “Statement of All Peonage Cases Since May 1, 1902,” J. W. Dimmick to M. H. Smith, March 3, 1909, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

36. Attorney General to Herman Perkins, undated note, Sept. 1923, 50-1-6, File 5280-03-02, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

37. “Copy of Report of the September 1911 Grand Jury of the Criminal Court of Jefferson County: Justice of the Peace”; Oliver Street to Attorney General, Jan. 24, 1912, File 50-112, RG60, NA.

38. Woodrow Wilson, Division and Reunion, 1829–1889 (New York: Longmans, Green, 1893), pp. 124, 125, 268, 273; Lawrence J. Friedman, The White Savage: Racial Fantasies in the Postbellum South (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970); Arthur Link, Wilson: The Road to the White House (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947); James Chace, 1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs— the Election That Changed the Country (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).

39. Bureau of the Census, Bulletin 129, Negroes in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1915), pp. 7, 36–39.

40. Bureau of the Census, Plantation Farming in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), pp. 36, 37.

41. William L. O’Neill, ed., Echoes of Revolt: The Masses, 1911–1917 (Chicago: Quadrangle, 1966), p. 232.

42. Quadrennial Report of the Board of Inspectors of Convicts, September 1, 1910, to August 31, 1914 (Montgomery, Ala., 1914), p. 180, ADAH.

43. Hastings H. Hart, Social Problems of Alabama: A Study of the Social Institutions and Agencies of the State of Alabama as Related to Its War Activities (Montgomery: Russell Sage Foundation, 1918).

44. See Pete Daniel, The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901–1969 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 110–31, citing trial transcript, Georgia v. John S. Williams, Newton Superior Court, March term, 1921. For the definitive treatment of the Williams case, see Gregory A. Freeman, Lay This Body Down: The 1921 Murders of Eleven Plantation Slaves (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1999); 1920 Census, Jasper County, Ga.

45. Ibid.

46. Thomas D. Sanford to Attorney General, April 11, 1921, 50-80-5, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

47. Joseph John to Attorney General, July 28, 1924, 50-30-1, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

48. J. Edgar Hoover to O. R. Luhring, May 13, 1926, 50-2-2-1, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

49. O. R. Luhring to Rebecca Jones, Aug. 6, 1926; Jones to Calvin Coolidge, July 26, 1926; affidavit of Rebecca Jones, July 26, 1926; Assistant Attorney General Nugent Dodds to Hon. Oscar DePriest, July 25, 1932; 50-1-2-2, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

50. N. Gordon Carper, “Martin Tabert, Martyr of an Era,” Florida Historical Quarterly 52 (October 1973): 115–31.

51. Jacksonville Florida Times-Union, May 24 and 25, 1923.

52. Report of the State Prison Inspector of Alabama, for the Period of Two Years Ending Sept. 30, 1928 (Montgomery: Birmingham Printing, 1928), in author's collection.

53. Mancini, p. 115.

54. County Camp Inspection Records, Department of Corrections, ADAH.

55. New York World, March 22, 23, 24, 27, 1926.

56. Mancini, pp. 115–16.

57. Associated Press, July 2, 1928.

58. 1930 Census, Alabama Census of Kilby Prison; 1900 Census, Tallapoosa County.

59. Draft Registration Card of Henry Tinsley, June 5, 1917, World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918 (Washington, D.C.: NA M1509), online data accessed at www.ancestry.com.

60. State Convict Record, Vol. 14, Sept. 1929–Jan. 1931, p. 217, ADAH; Tinsley died in 1971, at the “Negro” veterans’ hospital at Tuskegee Institute.

CHAPTER XVII: FREEDOM

1. 1930 Census, Georgia.

2. John Spivak, Georgia Nigger (New York: Brewer, Warren and Putnam, 1932), pp. 61–65.

3. Ibid., pp. 104–5.

4. Ibid., pp. 97–99.

5. Ibid., p. 240.

6. Ibid., unnumbered pages.

7. Report of the State Prison Inspector of Alabama, for the Period of Two Years Ending September 30, 1928 (Birmingham: Birmingham Printing, 1928), in author's collection.

8. Walter Wilson, Forced Labor in the United States (New York: International Publishers, 1933), pp. 92–94.

9. O. B. Willis to Department of Justice, Nov. 20, 1933; Joseph B. Keenan to O. B. Willis, Dec. 8, 1933, 50-1-0, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

10. Ibid.

11. Francis Biddle, In Brief Authority (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), p. 155.

12. Francis Biddle to All United States Attorneys, Dec. 12, 1941, “Circular No. 3591, Re: Involuntary Servitude, Slavery, and Peonage,” File 50-821, RG60, NA.

13. Francis Biddle, A Casual Past: The Reminiscences of a Former Attorney General of the United States (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), pp. 339, 374, 376–77.

14. Biddle, “Civil Rights and the Federal Law,” Speech at Cornell University (Oct. 4, 1944) (on file with the Duke Law Journal), cited in Risa L. Goluboff, “The Thirteenth Amendment and the Lost Origins of Civil Rights,” Duke Law Journal 50, no. 6 (2001): 1609.

15. Biddle, Brief Authority, pp. 154–60.

16. Biddle to All U.S. Attorneys.

17. J. Edgar Hoover to Wendell Berge, July 18, 1942, Re: Charles Edward Bledsoe; W. F. Lanier—Involuntary Servitude and Slavery, File 50-843, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

18. Wendell Berge to J. Edgar Hoover, Director Federal Bureau of Investigation, Aug. 8, 1942, File 50-843, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

19. Berge to Francis H. Inge, Aug. 8, 1942, File 50-843, Peonage Files, RG60, NA.

20. Galveston Daily News, Oct. 2, 1942, p. 14.

21. Frank Coleman to U.S. Board of Parole, March 15, 1945; Douglas McGregor to Attorney General, June 28, 1943; “Judgment, United State Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, Extract from the Minutes of June 19th, 1943,” File 50-74-6, RG 60, NA.

22. Corpus Christi Times, March 23, 1943, quoted in Goluboff, p. 38.

EPILOGUE

1. Interview by the author of Molly Cottenham, Feb. 2002.

2. Interview by the author of Harold Cottingham, Feb. 2002.

3. Interview by the author of J. Christopher Flowers, Oct. 9, 2007.

4. Census, 1900, 1910, 1930; U.S. Social Security Administration Death Index.

5. http://www.sloss.com/coke/history.asp.

6. Interview by the author of Rodney Mills Cook Jr., and English Robinson, Oct. 2, 2007.

7. Speech by Gary N. Drummond, Oct. 2000, posted at www.drummondco.com.

8. Corporate records, Secretary of State's Office, State of Alabama, Montgomery, Ala.

9. Douglas A. Blackmon, “Hard Time: From Alabama's Past, Capitalism and Racism in a Cruel Partnership,” Wall Street Journal, July 16, 2001, p. 1.

10. Ibid.

11. Hearing before U.S. District Court Judge James Elicon, Feb. 13, 2004, Tulsa.

12. Interview by the author of Martha Minow, June 2001.

13. Blackmon, “Silent Partner: How the South's Fight to Uphold Segregation Was Funded Up North,” Wall Street Journal, June 11, 1999, p. 1.

14. Interview by the author of Tom Ferrall, 2001.

15. “Wachovia Announces National Partnerships in Support of African Americans,” July 28, 2005, www.wachovia.com.

16. Interview by the author of Ken Thompson, chairman and chief executive officer, Wachovia Bank, Sept. 14, 2007.

17. Interview by the author of Eugene Reese, Sept. 19, 2007.

18. Interview by the author of Earl Brown, John Burt, April 23, 2002, Birmingham, Ala.

19. Taylor Branch, At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years, 1965–68 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2006), pp. 303–5.

20. Martin Luther King Jr., notes in margins of Charles Silberman, Crisis in Black and White, 1964, p. 6, Papers of Dr. Martin Luther King, AHC.

21. Blackmon, “Hard Time.”

22. Interviews by the author of Pearline Danzey, Ida Hogan, Cynthia James, Melissa Danzey Craddock, and James Danzey, Sept. 28, 2000.

23. Ibid.