Resource: Stanley v. Ivey

In Alabama’s complex history, the remnants of slavery in the state’s prison system cast a long shadow. Following the legal abolition of slavery in Alabama, through the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and an analogous provision in Article I, Section 32, of the Alabama Constitution, racial oppression evolved as the State established “Black Codes” and other forms of criminalization and punishment to maintain permanent control over freed Black people. The Thirteenth Amendment and Alabama’s Constitution contained an exception permitting slavery or involuntary servitude for those “duly convicted” of a crime. In the first half of the twentieth century, through the use of convict leasing and chain gangs, Alabama’s prisons became not only the most profitable in the nation, but the most fatal as the state revived some of the most violent practices inherent to – and perfected under – the institution of slavery.