My interest in convict leasing began roughly five years ago. I was sitting on my couch reading Douglas Blackmon's Slavery By Another Name. I came to particularly gruesome paragraph, which detailed a punishment doled out to a prisoner. I became  so overwhelmed with emotion, having never learned about this angle of enslavement in high school. We were simply taught slavery ended in 1865. But it became overwhelmingly clear that the enslavement of Blacks did not end with the 13th Amendment—but evolved to suit the South's need for labor. 

Since then I have sought after this topic, and I am continuously amazed and disgusting at the far-reaching consequences that evolved from legalized forced labor.