Slavery persists in U.S. prisons; incarcerated workers in Alabama are fighting to abolish it

June 19, 2024, New York, New York – In recognition of Juneteenth, the Center for Constitutional Rights released the following statement: 

Today we commemorate the end of chattel slavery 159 years ago and recommit to the struggle for Black liberation. Celebrated in Black communities since the first anniversary, Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, and enforced the Emancipation Proclamation, which Lincoln had issued two years earlier. This capped a centuries-long struggle led by enslaved people, supported by abolitionists, and secured by victory in a war that killed more than 600,000 people. Later that year, the United States banned slavery by ratifying the 13th Amendment. 

The 13th Amendment, however, contains a prison slavery loophole that Southern legislatures and the forces of capital were quick to exploit. They used Black codes and convict leasing to re-enslave thousands, triggering the country’s first prison boom. For the white power structure, prisons served a dual purpose: continued social control and economic exploitation of Black people. It’s a historical fact that the U.S. system of mass incarceration grew out of chattel slavery.   

Prison slavery persists. Across the country, prison authorities use the threat of punishment to force incarcerated people to work for pennies per hour or no pay at all, often under brutal conditions. Corporations like Walmart and McDonald's profit from their labor, and incarcerated workers make billions for state governments, mitigating the costs of their own confinement. With an incarceration rate five times that of white people, Black people are much more likely to provide slave labor, and some are forced to work in the same plantations fields where enslaved people labored before the Civil War.  

There’s an important effort in Congress to close the 13th Amendment loophole, but a change in federal law alone will not lead to the eradication of forced prison labor. Efforts in state legislatures and organizing within and by affected communities, including imprisoned people, are likewise needed. In 2022, following a strike by incarcerated workers, Alabama voters approved an amendment to the state constitution to extend the ban on slavery and involuntary servitude to prison. Now imprisoned workers, seeking enforcement of the amendment, are suing state officials. The plaintiffs –Trayveka Stanley, Reginald Burrell, Dexter Avery, Charlie Gray, Melvin Pringle, and Ranquel Smith – have all been punished or threatened with punishment for resisting slave labor. 

On this Juneteenth, our client Mr. Ranquel Smith reminds us to all take heed of the words of Frederick Douglass: “[Slavery] has been called a great many names, and it will call itself by yet another name; and you and I and all of us had better wait and see what new form this old monster will assume, in what new skin this old snake will come forth next."

Alabama’s continued use of forced prison labor stands in stark contrast to the governor’s declaration of Juneteenth as a state holiday earlier this year; so today, the state is celebrating the end of the slavery while perpetuating it. We are proud to represent incarcerated workers as they seek to abolish forced prison labor, and we will continue to support them until slavery is banned everywhere, once and for all, in all its forms – not just in the law but in practice. 

For more info on the incarcerated workers and their lawsuit, please visit the case page. 

With a strategic Southern Regional Office centered in Jackson, Mississippi, the Center for Constitutional Rights’ Southern Justice Rising initiative represents our deepened, renewed institutional commitment to liberatory movements in the Southern states like Alabama. We have worked closely with generations of Southern freedom fighters and continue that historical work by partnering with Southern grassroots movements, human rights defenders, and community organizations fighting to transform material conditions, dismantle systems of oppression, and advance visions of collective liberation today.