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Hellraisers Journal – Saturday July 13, 1901
Mrs. Douglass Speaks at Buffalo Convention of National Assoc. of Colored Women
From The Buffalo Review of July 12, 1901:
Convict Lease System.
There was a larger attendance at last night’s session than at any time during the convention [of the National Association of Colored Women]. After vocal music by a local musical club, the president, Mrs. Terrell, introduced the chief speaker of the evening, Mrs. Frederick Douglas, widow of the man who espoused the negro’s cause so earnestly during his life time. Mrs. Douglas has gone deep into the study of the convict lease system of the South, and it was of that she spoke last night.
She explained why the system came to be adopted. After the war, she said, many of the Southern cities had no penitentiaries and they had many prisoners, sentenced for small or great offenses. They were leased to companies whose only interest was to wring every cent possible out of their labor. Mrs. Douglas said it has been proved that in the State of Alabama the death rate in the convict camps is 41 out of 100, annually, and at one investigation only three prisoners were found to have survived an eight-year sentence and not one lived to complete a ten-year imprisonment.
She spoke of the conditions in the convict camps in Georgia, Florida, Arkansas and other states where the greatest cruelty is practised on the prisoners, the large majority of whom are negroes. Boys, women and men are chained together in gangs and the utmost immortality prevails among them. Mrs. Douglas said the cruelty of the punishments inflicted on the prisoners equals that of inquisition times, the disease and filth that abounds in the camps are beyond description.
The National Association of Colored Women is seeking to arouse the people of the United States to the enormity of the evil of the lease system. The women feel they are powerless to stop the evil but they are anxious to enlist the help of all right-minded Americans…..
[Photograph, emphasis and paragraph breaks added.]
