I'd also point out that while slavery may have supposedly ended after the civil war, crimes were created and applied selectively to black people.
Combined with racial violence, sharecropping that kept black people in constant debt, and other policies, many black people were still forced to labor against their will.
Even now, prison labor is still regularly exploited. For example, low level offenders in California are a big part of the fire fighters that fight wildfires, but they are paid below minimum wage (like a dollar an hour), and then, despite that training, they typically can't work as firefighters after release because of their criminal history.
Combined with racial violence, sharecropping that kept black people in constant debt, and other policies, many black people were still forced to labor against their will.
Even now, prison labor is still regularly exploited. For example, low level offenders in California are a big part of the fire fighters that fight wildfires, but they are paid below minimum wage (like a dollar an hour), and then, despite that training, they typically can't work as firefighters after release because of their criminal history.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/14/california-is-paying-inmates...
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4928680/Haunting-pi... https://theconversation.com/exploiting-black-labor-after-the... https://listverse.com/2017/06/21/10-ways-american-slavery-co...