Contrary to popular belief, slavery as it is broadly defined was not abolished after the Civil War and still exists to this day. White legislators in the postwar South worked to create a system in which prisons could lease inmates, especially black inmates, to private companies for profit. This convict leasing system resurrected the antebellum view that black people were property, had no rights, and belonged to white caretakers. These values ​​and the convict leasing system as a whole appear in The Color Purple by Alice Walker when Sofia is arrested and sentenced to prison. While Celie's daughter-in-law Sofia and her family are away, the mayor's wife, Miss Millie, notices how tidy her children look and asks if she would work for her and take care of her. daughter, Eleanor Jane. Sofia rejects the offer with a rude retort and is therefore arrested. Sofia is sentenced to twelve years in prison, after which her family renegotiates the sentence to twelve years working as a servant for the mayor's family. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the convict leasing system perpetuated and deepened the culture and effects of slavery in America's new South structurally, socially, and economically (Myers 17 ). Recognizing that convict leasing was simply a new name for slavery allows for a better understanding that Sofia's new sentence of working in the mayor's house not only serves as punishment for the accused crime, but is also a means for white people to to treat her like a slave in order to demoralize her, in a gender-specific way, so that she no longer has the same humanity as before her imprisonment even if she seems to have completely recovered from her servitude. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayThe passage of the 13th Amendment marked the end of organized slavery; however, the structure and implementation of the convict leasing system provided whites with instruments to recreate legal slavery during the Reconstruction of the South. Historian Kim Gilmore argues that one of these mechanisms was the racist "Black Code" laws that white legislators passed in order to target African Americans for non-violent and often ridiculous crimes, with the sole purpose of increase the black prison population in order to maximize the size of the convict leasing system (Gilmore). Powerful whites also worked to destroy major pillars of black communities, such as churches and social organizations, in order to deprive blacks of employment opportunities (Gilmore). These circumstances made black people more likely to commit crimes to support themselves and, as a result, end up in prison. In addition to sabotaging African American communities, white legislators had complete control over the “contours of liberty” in the prison system (Gilmore). Prison officials used race as a metric to determine which prisoners should be selected for the convict leasing system because slave culture presented the idea that African Americans were better suited to manual labor than whites (Gilmore). In addition to the unfair selection of convict workers, the inhumane conditions of their work were also an alarming problem. Although these conditions were heavily criticized by the public, Professor Martha Myers insists that the state did little to deter these slave-like practices. The attackers convictedwere only fined for the atrocities they committed and their victims, like property, were redistributed to another “ringleader” when they were mistreated (17). As more and more objections to these conditions came from the white public, laws were passed to protect the rights of private prisoners (Myers 19). Myers argues that these laws were considered "toothless" in the sense that they were rarely enforced, were only put in place to conceal the few rights convicts had, and masked how closely they resembled slavery. system was (19). Once the flaws in these laws were exposed, academic Sarah Haley argues that the state created the chain gang system, in which convicts were hired exclusively to work on state infrastructure projects, in order to conceal the forms of slavery remaining in the United States after emancipation (53-54). The format and execution of the convict labor system directly reflected the values ​​and institutions of slavery in the South. One such institution of slavery that continued in the convict leasing system was the economic exploitation of African American prisoners to build the South's economy and infrastructure. The greatest need of the new Southern economy was a source of cheap labor to replace the free labor provided by slaves (Finkelman 352-353). Author Paul Finkelman claims that "prison rings" have made the inmate leasing system even more "corrupt" by facilitating illegal, secret deals in which wealthy white business owners would pay prison officers high prices. low for free labor (353). The illicit arrangements promoted by these institutions reflected the way in which wealthy white landowners could purchase free slave labor from slave traders before abolition. Another postwar economic problem that Southern legislators had to grapple with was how to increase the size of prisons due to the increase in the number of legal citizens and a higher crime rate after the war. emancipation (Finkelman 352). Finkelman explains that Southern legislatures did not have the funds to increase the number of prisons in their states and badly needed resources to rebuild infrastructure destroyed during the Civil War (352). Their alternative, supported by black and white legislators, was to lease inmates to private companies in order to obtain more public funds while managing the growing prison population (Finkelman 352). This strategy adopted by the Southern states allowed the postwar Southern economy to be made entirely by black men and women, in the same way that the antebellum Southern economy was built by slaves (Gilmore). State governments manipulated the convict leasing system in order to restore the economic benefits that slavery had provided in the past. Besides the economic similarities between the convict leasing system and slavery, the leasing system also reflected slavery on a social level through the inhumane treatment of convicts, the terms of agreements between private companies and prisons, and the treatment of black women. The most well-known social consequence of the convict labor system was the deplorable difficulties that black convicts faced when engaged in business. Finkelman claims that farmers, "committed to racial control," often tortured their workers and killed large numbers of them in order to maintain physical andpsychological that they once had during slavery (353). Along with the bodily harm that black workers faced, convicted former slaves were often rented out to their former slave masters, generating the exact same circumstances they had to endure during slavery (Finkelman 353). Finkelman adds that these new masters had complete control over the lives and bodies of their convicts (353). To control convicts, private companies paid a flat fee and had to provide housing, clothing, and protection, the same things a slave master had to equip his slaves with (Finkelman 353). Haley reveals that these private landlords treated black women as both servants and manual laborers, perceiving them as neither a stereotypical man nor woman (55). This lack of association with either binary gender resulted in "black women's humanity" being "illegible" and them being treated as property rather than animate beings (Haley 55). The idea that black women subjected to the forced labor system were not human, and therefore slaves, allowed white families to believe that it was their right to manage these “bodies” (Haley 55). The Hateful Mental and Physical BurdensThe conditions imposed on African Americans under the convict leasing system were comparable to the conditions of slavery. Understanding the horrific conditions in which the convicts were employed sheds light on how Sofia's imprisonment is not only physically exhausting, but also mentally crippling. Sofia first encounters the cruel treatment of African Americans within the criminal justice system when police officers, on orders from the mayor, arrest her and "smash her skull...break her ribs...rip her nose off." …blind her” and injure her so badly that she “cannot speak” (86-87). The fact that the police "cracked" Sofia means that they broke her trust and seemed to shatter her humanity, filling her with the repression and defeat that accompanied these inhumane public beatings. The beatings that Sofia is forced to face reflect the abuses committed by white business owners on the convicts, which Finkelman described as a way of reestablishing the antebellum principle that blacks were subjugated. humans (353). Once recovered from her arrest, Sofia serves her sentence as a servant to the mayor's family living “under the house” (Walker 103). By describing her living conditions as "inferior" to the family she works for, Sofia implies that she is not only physically inferior to the mayor's family, but also mentally below their level of humanity. Sofia continues to illustrate the damage caused by her life as a convict while visiting her family by admitting that “I am a slave” (103). This concession signifies that she is doing the work of a slave and highlights how the total control over her life and body, mentioned earlier by Finkelman, has forced her to feel equivalent to property (353). After being freed from her slave labor, Sofia enjoys a regular dinner with her family. During the meal, the group “can’t really find room for” Sofia and considers her a “stranger” in her own home (Walker 202). Sofia being called an “outsider” implies that her imprisonment has made her unrecognizable and that her presence, and therefore her humanity, is “illegible” to the rest of her family (Haley 55). The ordeals Sofia had to endure in prison completely defeated her mentally and physically, changing her confident and fierce demeanor into one.