Tuesday, four states voted to make slavery illegal, but one state, Louisiana, voted to keep its slavery law intact. Even blacks in Louisiana voted against Amendment 7. What gives? Do Louisiana Blacks want slavery?
Blacks in Louisiana voted against Amendment 7, but there is a good reason why.
Tuesday, 61 percent of Louisiana residents voted against Amendment 7, which would have made involuntary servitude in Louisiana illegal, except for the administration of criminal justice. In Ouachita Parish, 64 percent of voters rejected the amendment.
The Louisiana legislature tried to pull a fast one on the public. Had Amendment 7 passed, Louisiana would go on record as abolishing slavery. However, because of a carefully worded amendment, Angola, Sheriff’s, and police departments would still be able to work inmates without pay. Nothing would change.
Look at the present law and what it would have been changed to:
The existing constitution provides that slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited, EXCEPT in the case of involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime.
Amendment 7 would have changed the existing language to provide that slavery and involuntary servitude are prohibited EXCEPT for the otherwise lawful administration of criminal justice.
When the bill was initially submitted, there was no EXCEPT. The EXCEPT in present law allows a judge to sentence a convict to “Hard labor.” In Angola, some prisoners are worked for as little as 2 cents an hour in the scorching heat while guards with shotguns stand over them on horseback. Around the state, prisoners without pay are forced to work on work crews at levees, wash cars, in kitchens, or work farms with little or no pay.
The present law allows slavery as a punishment for crime.
Amendment 7 would have changed the wording of the EXCEPT, but it would have created a giant legal loophole that could allow convict slavery to continue. The law administration of criminal justice can mean anything a warden or sheriff wants it to mean. For example, a sheriff could say, we need convicts to work in the kitchens, wash cars, perform janitorial work, and shelve books in the library to reduce our cost to make more deputies available for the “lawful administration of criminal justice.”
That’s why State Representative Edmund Jordan took the unprecedented step of campaigning against his own bill. He urged Louisiana residents to kill the amendment so it could be submitted without the “EXCEPT.” What he wants is a clean bill that bans slavery, period.
Sheriffs, police chiefs, and wardens will oppose his new bill because it means inmates must be paid at least the minimum wage for their labor. Sheriffs who provide inmate labor will lose money big time.
Amendment 7 wasn’t opposed by Wardens or others because it wouldn’t change anything.
When Jordan and the Legislative Black Caucus introduce a new amendment without the EXCEPT next year, expect law enforcement leaders across the state to protest.
The protest will find them asking one single question: “We can’t afford not to have slaves..who will wash our cars, pick our peas, clean our floors?. If you end slavery, you will end a way of life that is a part of our culture!”
If that sounds familiar, it’s the same argument Slave owners used to speak against the 13th amendment of the constitution after the Civil War.
