ABSTRACT
In view of the oppression and violence suffered by black people during the post-Civil War period, one might ask why most remained in the South. It does seem odd that they did not leave, move north, or perhaps migrate west, as so many whites, European immigrants included, were doing during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Thus, from the end of the Civil War until well into the twentieth century, a large portion of the Southern economy was based an integrated system of convict labor, which supplied manpower primarily for public works and industry, and debt peonage, which became the mainstay of Southern agriculture. By 1900, debt peonage had replaced the plantation economy of slavery. Across the South local law enforcement could not be trusted to investigate peonage cases for they were an integral part of the system itself.
