(narrator)
September 1901-- 
the dawn of a new century. 

John Davis, now 23 and renting his own Alabama farm,
was on his way to Goodwater, about 18 miles away. 
His wife was ill, and being
cared for there by her parents. 
It was harvest time,
and Davis would have been
careful to avoid trouble, 
eager to return safely to 
his own small patch of cotton. 
But trouble found him 
in the form of Robert Franklin,
a local merchant and constable. 

Bob Franklin said, "Nigger 
have you got any money?
When are you gonna pay 
the money you owe me?"
I said, 
"I don't owe you any money."

(narrator)
Convicts were not 
the only Southerners 
being forced into hard labor. 
Throughout the South, many thousands of African Americans
were tied to white employers
through various forms of debt. 

(Pete Daniel)
You get a person in debt, you continually keep him in debt,
you never let him work it off, and you control their labor.
Any kind of relationship where you use debt
as the fulcrum to extract labor, that's illegal.
You've violated the peonage law.