2 chapters across the catalog
Post-Civil War sharecropping is described as "slavery under another name," where landowners used debt and high-interest store credit to keep laborers tied to the land. Mo Fax shares a personal connection, mentioning his great-great-grandfather's sharecropping records. The hosts draw parallels between historical debt peonage and modern economic systems where individuals are unable to own property.
The 13th Amendment's exception for "punishment for a crime" allowed slavery to evolve into convict leasing and mass incarceration. A Vice report features a genealogist who found cases of families held in de facto slavery in Mississippi as late as 1961. The segment highlights the brutal enforcement of these systems through violence, including accounts of individuals forced to dig their own graves.
