What the Black Code accomplished was a reinstitution of slavery via an ingenious phenomenon called Prisoner Leasing. Lacking facilities to house and manage a large and growing convict population, the State allowed the "leasing" of these prisoners to various business enterprises in need of labor. It was the responsibility of the enterprise to guard, maintain and direct those prisoners it had under lease. In the antebellum South, the most valuable property a landowner had, aside from the land itself, was the slave. As chattel, they had a high value. Owners had incentive to house, feed and maintain them in as healthy a condition as economically possible so that they could deliver the labor they were intended to supply. With the advent of prisoner leasing, all this changed. Not being "owned," but merely leased, and with a ready supply of replacements, prisoners could literally be worked to death. Records show annual mortality rates exceeding forty-five per cent.
The levees that rose to my right, huge earthen berms dug out of the heavy black bottomland, were the product of this system of labor. And as I headed for Clarksdale and the Delta Blues Museum, my plan was to visit later the source of much of that labor, the infamous Parchman Farm Prison.
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