Thread by @chefcarney

On July 10, 1887, the grand jury of Hinds County, MS released a report revealing the horrific conditions state prisoners endured under convict leasing-a system that permitted private companies to lease prisoners from the state to labor for no pay.
#ADOSAF
calendar.eji.org/racial-injusti…

The grand jury observed that many prisoners who had been leased were emaciated and malnourished because the leasing companies did not provide adequate food.

Investigators also noted that many prisoners exhibited scars and blisters indicating they had been severely beaten, and showed signs of health conditions like tuberculosis and frostbite.

Of the 204 prisoners leased in January 1887, twenty had died by June of the same year, and twenty-three more were returned to the state penitentiary due to illness or disability

The report stated: "We found twenty-six inmates of the hospital, of whom several have been lately brought there off the farms and railroads.

“Many of them are afflicted with consumption and other incurable diseases, and all bear on their persons marks of the most inhuman and brutal treatment.”

“They are lying there dying, some of them on bare boards, so poor and emaciated that their bones almost come through the skin; many complaining for the want of food.”

“One poor fellow burst out crying and said he was literally starving to death. We actually saw live vermin crawling over their faces, and the little bedding and clothing they have is in tatters and stuffed with filth."

The grand jury’s report concluded, “God will never smile on a State that treats its convicts as Mississippi does.”

Mississippi remains one of America’s most carceral states. It has a 40% Black (#ADOS) population. Blacks make up 57% of the jailed population and 67% of the prison population in MS. Slavery still exists in this state.
@MississippiAdos @ADOSorg
#ADOSAF✊🏾
vera.org/downloads/pdfd…

@threadreaderapp unroll. Bon appetite’

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