"Hellish in Principle and Brutal in Practice": Preliminary Investigations of 19th Century Prison Labor in North Carolina

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

This paper presents preliminary research on the prison labor camps erected for the construction of the Western North Carolina Railroad (WNCRR) during the late 1870’s and 1880’s under the convict leasing system. This system proliferated across the American South following the Civil War and the emancipation of enslaved people. While also effecting poor white people, this system overwhelmingly served as a way to continue exploiting Black labor and enacting white supremacist logics. The author discusses research conducted in archives across North Carolina, oral history interviews with local community members, and archaeological survey near Old Fort, NC, along the WNCRR corridor. This work lays a foundation for future excavations at these sites and brings attention to an understudied area in American historical archaeology which draws connections with the archaeology of carceral systems around the world.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2023 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow