Worse Than Slavery Quotes

“Nugent worried instead about his own mortality—about dying on a faraway battlefield without “leaving an heir behind to … represent me hereafter in the affairs of men.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery

“The South's economic development can be traced by the blood of its prisoners.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

“In terms of human misery, however, this system could hardly have been worse. The convict now found himself laboring for the profits of three separate parties: the sublessee, the lessee, and the state. There was no one to protect him from savage beatings, endless workdays, and murderous neglect.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

“In a region where dark skin and forced labor went hand in hand, leasing would become a functional replacement for slavery, a human bridge between the Old South and the New.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

“Yes, a revolution has taken place—by force of arms—and a race are disenfranchised. They are to be returned to a condition of serfdom—an era of second slavery.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

“Black children remained a vital part of Mississippi’s powerful convict labor machine.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice

“Some whites talked about leaving Mississippi—moving to Texas and California, where they would not have to mingle with Negroes or compete with them for work... There was also talk about 'colonizing' the blacks in Mexico or some other distant place. But this notion had little support in a state so utterly dependent upon Negro sweat and toil. As one editor put it: 'Every white man would be glad to have the entire raced deported—except his own laborers.”
― David M. Oshinsky, Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice