Before Green Cottenham knew what had happened, the Sheriff grabbed him off the street. It was illegal in 1908 in Shelby County, Alabama, to be a “vagrant” – code for being Black and unemployed.
It didn’t matter that unemployment was high, and many employers refused to hire Blacks. Cottenham was sent to jail.
Because he couldn’t pay the fees, he was sentenced to a year of hard labor – but it still wasn’t over. After completing his sentence, he was sold to a coal company to keep working, without pay.
45 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, he was re-enslaved – though that’s not what they called it.
The coal mine was dark and damp. Many of the workers got sick from pneumonia and tuberculosis. Cottenham was required to remove eight tons of coal daily, and if he didn’t reach his quota, he would get whipped!
Because of the disease, the accidents, and the intense labor, the overseers would throw the dead bodies into shallow graves. To the whites, these Black bodies were interchangeable – good for labor and little else. Sound familiar?
Laws in the United States mean little if white supremacy is the real law of the land. Slavery had been defeated legally, but anti-Blackness found a way around it – and continues to do so today.