Crimes of Capitalism: Race, Speculation, and the Rise of the New South

• In Event: The Politics of Racial Capitalism

Abstract

What is the role of the criminal legal system in the rebuilding of southern state power after the end of the Civil War? Specifically, what is the role of the convict lease system in America’s economic development? Despite extensive accounts of crime and punishment and narratives of state-building in the post-civil war South, there has been surprisingly little research that has explicitly examined the importance and consequence that the institution of criminal justice has had for the process of southern state building in American political and constitutional development. Crimes of Capitalism endeavors to reorient how we think about the history of race, criminal justice, and capitalism by placing the writing of new criminal laws and convict leasing at the crux of understanding southern economic growth in the period 1865-1910. This paper examines the way southern politicians and landowners utilized the law as a tool to prevent a loss of profit after the formal end of slavery. In other words, concern about the available supply of black labor drove the writing of new criminal laws (black codes) in the post-Civil War South and contributed to the making of new criminal subjects. My current archival work focuses on Texas and Alabama and focuses on re-reading black codes in these two states as a form of financial protection through the practice of convict leasing.

Author

• Megan Ming Francis, University of Washington