Stony the Road: Reconstruction, White Supremacy, and the Rise of Jim Crow

The parallels Gates draws between the United States’ past and present are among the most compelling aspects of Stony the Road. Gates contextualizes Obama’s presidency by presenting it against the backdrop of the Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction periods. He compares Obama’s 2008 election to three important events in Black history, namely, the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), the legal abolishment of enslavement with the 13th Amendment (1865), and the Reconstruction Acts (1867-68). Just like Reconstruction, however, the election of the first Black president sparked a backlash that resulted in a rise in white supremacy and a reduction of Black people’s rights. The post-Reconstruction era curtailed Black voting rights and eroded Black people’s gains. Similarly, President Trump attacked his predecessor’s foreign and domestic policy achievements by pulling out of the Iran Nuclear Deal and seeking to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA), Obama’s signature healthcare initiative, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), part of the Obama administration’s immigration reform.

The ratification of the 13th Amendment in 1865 brought a legal end to enslavement and involuntary servitude, but de facto enslavement continued with the implementation of post-Reconstruction policies, notably, sharecropping and convict leasing. Sharecropping indebted free Black people to white landowners, keeping them poor while enriching their landlords. Similarly, convict leasing was a system that forced Black criminals to work without remuneration. As Gates argues, both policies expanded the South’s agricultural economy by exploiting Black labor.

The exploitation of Black labor grew exponentially in the 20th century, due in large part to the mass incarceration of Black men. In the 1970s, the US became the world’s leading prison nation through “tough on crime” policies, notably, the war on drugs, which disproportionately targeted young Black men (Pager, Devah. Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. Chicago. University of Chicago Press, 2007). Incarceration rates climbed dramatically in the closing decades of the 20th century, despite declining rates of crime across the country. According to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), there are currently more than 1.2 million people in federal and state prisons (“Captive Labor: Exploitation of Incarcerated Workers.” ACLU, 15 June 2022). Two out of three of these are workers with no legal protections against exploitation. The award-winning Netflix documentary, 13th, explicitly connects the mass incarceration of Black men to enslavement. The filmmakers, Ava DuVernay and Spencer Averick, explain that people lose their right to refuse to work the moment they enter prison. They trace the origins of modern prison labor to the 13th Amendment’s Exception Clause, which explicitly excludes convicted criminals. Incarcerated workers are not protected by minimum wage laws, do not have the right to unionize, and are denied workplace safety guarantees. According to the ACLU, prisoners earn between 13 cents and 52 cents per hour. In seven states, they receive no pay at all. Those who earn wages give the bulk of their earnings to the government to pay for their room and board, court costs, restitution, and other fees associated with maintaining the prison infrastructure. Prison labor generates $2 billion per year in goods and $9 billion per year for prison maintenance. As DuVernay and Averick argue, the exploitation of Black labor makes the prison system a new form of enslavement. Like enslavement, moreover, the mass incarceration of Black men dehumanizes Black people, separates families, and results in generational trauma.