The 13th Lie

“The 13th Lie: The Slavery You Were Never Meant to See”

By Candace Goodman | The Good Blog

If you're reading this in a hoodie made in America, if you've eaten fast food recently, if you drove your car today—this story involves you.

It involves all of us.

Because somewhere in this country, right now, someone is scrubbing blood from a prison kitchen floor for 13 cents an hour. Someone is sewing military uniforms they’ll never be allowed to wear. Someone is harvesting vegetables they’ll never taste. And they are doing it not just behind bars—but behind a wall of silence that the U.S. has built around one unthinkable truth:

Slavery in America never ended.

It was just repackaged.

The Clause That Never Died

The 13th Amendment—celebrated as the crown jewel of American freedom—contains a fatal exception:

 “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude… shall exist within the United States, except as a punishment for crime.”

That six-word loophole gave birth to a second, quieter system of slavery—this time legal, hidden, and self-perpetuating.

What followed wasn't a glitch in the American story. It was the story.

A System Designed to Re-Enslave

In the years after the Civil War, newly freed Black men were arrested en masse for “crimes” like walking without proof of employment or gathering in groups after dark. States passed Black Codes, legalized racial profiling, and built new jails overnight.

Then came the “convict leasing” system, where prisoners—most of them Black—were auctioned to private companies to build railroads, harvest cotton, and dig coal. One in four never made it out alive.

By 1880, 90% of Alabama’s entire prison population was Black. By 1908, the death rate of leased convicts in Mississippi was ten times higher than that of enslaved plantation workers before emancipation.

This wasn’t justice. It was state-sponsored human trafficking—and it built the modern South.

A New Name for the Same Machine

In 2024, you won’t find plantation fields filled with chained men.

But you will find over 800,000 incarcerated workers, many doing labor for private corporations, state governments, and federal agencies—without any of the protections guaranteed to other workers. No unions. No OSHA. No minimum wage.

More than 75% of incarcerated workers say they are forced to work. In at least five states, including Texas, Georgia, Arkansas, Alabama, and Mississippi, they are paid nothing at all.

In California, prisoners who risked their lives to fight wildfires—standing in the same infernos as professionals—were paid $1 per hour. When released, most were barred from becoming firefighters due to their criminal records.

That is not rehabilitation. That is economic parasitism.

The Corporations That Profit—and Remain Silent

Over 4,100 American corporations have profited from prison labor. You won’t find it on their balance sheets, but it’s there.

• Starbucks once used subcontractors that employed prisoners to package coffee beans.
• Victoria’s Secret used prison labor to sew its lingerie.
• McDonald’s
• Walmart
• AT&T
• Whole Foods
• Boeing

 All have all been linked to prison-made products or services. State DMVs rely on inmates to produce license plates for pennies.

In many cases, these companies receive tax breaks for hiring incarcerated individuals—thanks to the Work Opportunity Tax Credit. They are rewarded for what human rights organizations have called “legalized slavery.”

And the profits flow both ways. The state of Alabama alone collected over $250 million in garnished wages from prison workers between 2000 and 2020. Those workers still couldn’t afford a $4 pack of socks from the commissary.

Psychological Carnage: A Nation Addicted to Punishment

Psychologist Dr. Craig Haney has spent decades interviewing inmates and studying the effects of prison labor. His conclusion is chilling:

 “Prison labor, when stripped of choice and fair compensation, ceases to be rehabilitative. It becomes psychological abuse—trauma wrapped in economic justification.”

Dr. Joy DeGruy coined the term Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome to describe the inherited trauma passed through generations of African Americans—rooted in centuries of bondage, carried forward through systems like the prison-industrial complex.

Today, 1 in 3 Black boys born in the U.S. is expected to go to prison if current trends continue.

And 1 in 9 Black children has had a parent incarcerated.

We are breeding trauma faster than we are building schools.

The Crack That Fueled the Fire

The explosion of mass incarceration didn’t happen in a vacuum.

In 1996, journalist Gary Webb exposed how the CIA allowed cocaine to pour into Black neighborhoods in Los Angeles, funneled by Nicaraguan rebels whom the U.S. supported. Webb’s work showed that the government helped fund a foreign war by letting drugs devastate Black communities—and then criminalized the aftermath.

The U.S. government denied the claims. But a 1998 CIA Inspector General report admitted the agency knew its allies were trafficking drugs—and did nothing.

Former DEA agent Michael Levine was blunt:

 “Without the CIA, there would be no crack epidemic.”

The timing was perfect—for prison profiteers.

The 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act created sentencing laws that punished crack cocaine 100 times more harshly than powdered cocaine. The result? Black men were locked up at rates never seen in American history.

And just as prisons overflowed, private prison companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group emerged. Their profits soared. Politicians passed laws guaranteeing 90% occupancy in some states.

This was not a coincidence. It was a coordinated economic harvest—with Black bodies as the crop.

Stories Behind the Bars

Bobby Rose, formerly incarcerated in New York, worked for eight years in a state-run garment factory making uniforms for corrections officers.

He was paid 16 cents an hour.

 “I was sewing the clothes of the men who controlled me. They wouldn’t give me toothpaste. But they gave me a needle and told me to work faster.”

Another man, Clarence Williams, spent 12 years in a Louisiana prison. He was part of a chain gang that cleared brush for the state highway department.

 “I worked every day for five years. Never got paid once. They said I owed the state money for my own incarceration.”

He was released with $12.35 in his pocket.

 A Nation of Denial

Every time you hear the phrase “do the crime, do the time,” understand what it obscures.

It obscures the fact that more than 60% of U.S. inmates are nonviolent offenders. That many are there because they couldn’t afford bail. That thousands are serving time because of outdated three-strikes laws or mandatory minimums that even their original judges opposed.

It obscures the children left behind. The families forced into poverty. The communities destabilized.

And it obscures the central truth:

We didn’t abolish slavery. We outsourced it—to our own prisons.

There Is No Moral Middle

You cannot look at this system and call it broken. It is not broken. It was built this way.

And if we call ourselves a democracy, then we must reconcile the fact that it rests on the unpaid labor of people we have dehumanized.

As Senator Jeff Merkley said in 2022:

 “Slavery is never acceptable. Not in a private business. Not in a state-run prison. Not anywhere.”

But it’s still here.

In concrete walls and legal clauses. In balance sheets and budget forecasts. In factories, fields, and firelines.

It is the longest-running open secret in American history.

And now that you know, the only question left is: Will you pretend you don’t?