The Materiality of Convict Leasing: Landscapes, Objects, and Lessons from 19th Century Carceral Unfreedom

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Materialities of (Un)Freedom: Examining the Material Consequences of Inequality within Historical Archaeology", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Despite promises of freedom and citizenship for Black people in the United States following the Civil War, legal and cultural systems arose almost immediately to ensure Black citizens, particularly those in former Confederate states, would never achieve parity with the region’s white population. The convict lease system was a key element of this oppression. The Lone Rock Stockade, located in Tracy City, Tennessee, served as the largest convict lease prison in the state. Over the 25 years convict leasing was in use in Tennessee, over 5,000 prisoners were sent to Tracy City where they were forced under threat of violence to work in coal mines and coke ovens. Using archaeological and landscape analyses, this paper examines how material culture played a key role in mediating ‘freedom’ in the context of incarceration and explore the role of convict leasing as an afterlife of slavery.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023   •
• Materialities of (Un)Freedom: Examining the Material Consequences of Inequality within Historical Archaeology

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow