(man) 
We as convicts, 
is something like 
a man drowning.
We have been convicted of felonies and because of that,
we have lost 
every friend on earth.

(narrator)
In 1884, a series 
of remarkable letters 
was sent from 
the Pratt Coal Mines 
to Alabama's 
new inspector of prisons. 
Their author was Ezekiel Archey, now a 25-year-old convict.

(man, as Ezekiel)
"All these years 
of how we suffered.
We have looked death 
in the face, 
worked hungry, thirsty, 
half-clothed and sore.

(narrator)
Archey was one of hundreds 
of convicts now being worked  
in a growing network 
of mines and factories 
around Alabama's new industrial center, Birmingham. 

Founded in 1871 and fed by intersecting railway lines,
Birmingham was poised to exploit
Alabama's rich underground
deposits of coal,
limestone, and iron ore: 
the ingredients of steel.

This was the new
industrial South, envisioned
just prior to the Civil War 
by slaveholder John T. Milner. 


(Douglas A. Blackmon)
John T. Milner 
was a brilliant engineer,
extraordinary businessman; 
he was also a supreme racist
and a despotic person.

(man)
Negro labor can be made exceedingly profitable
in manufacturing iron 
and in rolling mills,
provided there is an overseer, 
a Southern man
who knows how to manage Negroes.

(Douglas A. Blackmon)
He laid out some of the first railroad lines
that would run across Alabama.
In many respects, he was
the Father of Southern Industrialization, 
particularly in 
the deep, deep South.

(narrator)
Milner's vision triggered 
decades of rapid 
industrial growth.
After emancipation, industrialists replaced 
slaves with convicts,
acquiring thousands from state
and county governments

(Mary Ellen Curtin)
You can't drive free labor 
the same way that you can
force prisoners to mine 
five tons of coal a day.
And this is why people 
like Milner
wanted prisoners 
in his coal mines.
He saw them as 
a great source of profit,
and he didn't have to worry
about labor disputes.


(man)
We would leave the cells 
around 3:00 a.m.,
and return at 8:00 p.m., 
going the distance of 3 miles
through rain or snow.

(Mary Ellen Curtin)
To describe the conditions 
in coal mine at this time,
and to say that they're
primitive is, 
you can't even imagine it.

(Douglas A. Blackmon)
This is a place where for weeks
or months at a time,
men might never see daylight.
The mine was often filled 
with standing water
around their ankles 
and their feet.
They had to drink 
from that water.
Disease ran rampant 
through these mines.

(Khalil Muhammad) 
They were incredibly 
dangerous places to work,
being subjected to violent explosions, poisonous gases
that were released as coal fell from the walls,
In addition 
to the falling coal itself.
Whippings, keeping 
people chained up, 
brutal kinds 
of physical torture, 
and mental abuse are the norm.
A lot of the things that kept people in control under slavery,
are amplified under 
this convict system.
Zeke Archey was one of 
about 500 convicts
at the Pratt Mines 
near Birmingham,  
nearly half 
the company's workforce. 
They were overseen 
by J.W. Comer,
the former slaveholder 
whose enterprises
now included convict mining. 
That Comer's a hard man.
I've seen him.
I've seen him hit men, 
100 and 160 times,
with a 10-pronged strap, 
then say they was not whipped.

(Cristina Comer)
When I learned about the brutality of J. W. Comer,
I um...well,
I just started 
weeping, and um, 
I actually didn't leave 
my house for two days,
'cause I was in such a state 
of grief and shock.
The stories that I heard 
about all the Comer men
when I was growing up, 
were about self-made men.
And so to learn about the ways 
that they weren't 
really self-made,
but were making themselves 
on the backs and
by the blood of other people, specifically the blacks
and the convict leasing system, 
definitely shattered 
that image for me.
He'd go off after 
an escaped man, 
one day, and dig his grave 
the same day.