We need federal legislation to mandate federal minimum wage and humane working conditions for all inmates in the country.

The states outlined in red (parts of the old confederacy, and home to the majority of America’s black population) pay their incarcerated inmates ZERO dollars for forced labor.

In Alabama inmates are punished if they refuse to work for no pay. This is slavery by any definition.

This has wide ranging effects because workers wages across the state are artificially suppressed. Let’s follow a simple logic chain: if a small business owner and local oligarch can contract labor for free from a prison slave mill, wages for all members of the working class in that state are artificially suppressed.

Because in 2026 a poor working class Alabamian is competing with slaves for his wage.

This probably explains why labor costs are traditionally cheaper throughout the South.

**The ACLU estimates it is 11 billion dollars of free labor annually that these states get from these inmates.

We need FEDERAL legislation demanding that inmates have to be paid federal minimum wage and provided basic worker protections with human rights and dignified treatment. The current system is slavery. It is a gross injustice to the incarcerated as well as the community who are held hostage to the whims of petty local tyrants with their slave labor armies.

** https://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-guardian-usa/20220616/281513639816184

Sheats was born on April 10, 1839, to planter William W. Sheats and his wife, Mary Garner Sheats, in Walker County, Alabama. He was raised on a farm and educated at Somerville Academy in Morgan County, Alabama. After graduation, he worked as a school teacher and became involved in politics.

At the age of 21, Sheats was elected to represent Winston County, Alabama, at the Alabama Secession Convention of 1861. Sheats ran on an explicit platform: he promised to vote against secession "first, last, and all the time". He voted against the ordinance of secession at every turn. When the ordinance passed on January 11, 1861, Sheats refused to sign the final document. He argued passionately that if the majority of Alabama could secede from the United States, then the Unionist majority in a county ought to be able to secede from Alabama.

In the Fall of 1861, Sheats was elected by citizens of Winston County, Alabama, to the Alabama House of Representatives. He did not attend the session because of his refusal to swear a required oath of allegiance to the Confederacy. He was subsequently expelled from the legislature the following year on a charge of treason.

Fleeing to the mountains of North Alabama, Sheats avoided conscription in the Confederate Army and encouraged men to join the Union Army, actions which led to the establishment of the 1st Alabama Cavalry. In one recruitment speech, Sheats spoke to an estimated audience of over two thousand citizens. He was determined to enlist himself, but was arrested in July 1862 for his actions. Sheats was released from Confederate custody after several months, but was arrested again in 1863 for his pro-Union sentiments and remained a prisoner until the end of the Civil War.

After the Civil War, Sheats was a member of the Alabama Constitutional Convention of 1865. He also studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1867, and began a legal practice in Decatur, Alabama, where he served as mayor in 1868. He was invited to be a Republican elector when Ulysses S. Grant was elected president in 1868 and 1872. President Grant appointed Sheats as U.S. Consul to Denmark in 1869, where he served until his election to the United States House of Representatives in 1873.

Following an unsuccessful reelection campaign, Sheats returned to Alabama where he was appointed Appraiser of Merchandise for the Port of Mobile and Assistant Collector of Internal Revenue. He married Mary Dickson Anderson on January 27, 1886, and once again settled in Decatur, Alabama, where he remained until his death on May 27, 1904.

The famous oratory of John Brown, knowing full well he was being martyred in the process, had been injured and captured in the raid on Harper's Ferry with his 19 men so few. They had frightened Old Virginia till she trembled through and through. He gave his defense in his trial, rejecting any suggestion to plead insanity, and spoke for himself. His wife had already died, and 12 of his children had already died by that point, and so he was fully intending to be the same as them now, and thus they hung him for a traitor, Virginia being the traitorous crew.

John Brown is besieged inside the armory. Why oh why did he let the train go?