Were my Black Family Members subject to "Peonage"

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Peonage and involuntary servitude became substitutes for the word slavery.

A Georgia Sharecropper’s Story of Forced Labor ca. 1900

At the turn of the century the group of black women most subject to sexual exploitation and abuse were those who lived under the system of quasi-slavery known as “peonage.”Under contract labor laws, which existed in almost every southern state, a laborer who signed a contract and then quit his or her job could be arrested. The horrors of this system of forced labor (as well as the equally horrific system of convict labor) are detailed in this stark, turn-of-the-century personal account of life under the “peonage” system in the South, published in the Independent magazine in 1904. Although this account by an African-American man did not focus especially on the sexual exploitation suffered by his wife and others, his report described how his wife was forced to become a mistress to the plantation’s owner.