Peonage example sentences

"Peonage" Example Sentences

1. The system of peonage practically enslaved sharecroppers, trapping them in endless debt.
2. Peonage violated the 13th Amendment ban on involuntary servitude.
3. Black codes and peonage kept African Americans tied to plantations after the Civil War.
4. The Supreme Court ruled that peonage constituted involuntary servitude and was unconstitutional.
5. Congress passed laws making peonage a criminal offense.
6. Landowners used intimidation and violence to maintain a system of peonage.
7. Peonage represented a form of neoslavery in the South after the Civil War.
8. Sharecropping was closely related to peonage and often overlapped.
9. Law enforcement officials often participated in upholding systems of peonage.
10. Peonage laws were used to target vagrants and force them into labor contracts.
11. The Freedman's Bureau tried to help break systems of peonage keeping African Americans trapped on plantations.
12. Escaping peonage and sharecropping was difficult due to Black Codes and threats of violence.
13. During the Reconstruction era, peonage trapped many African American sharecroppers in systems of debt servitude.
14. Landowners used contract clauses and fraudulent accounting to trap sharecroppers in systems of peonage.
15. Peons had few rights and little freedom under systems of peonage.
16. Extensive federal investigations and prosecutions eventually undermined peonage in the South.
17. The Justice Department actively pursued cases of peonage through the mid 20th century.
18. Widespread illiteracy left many Southern workers vulnerable to exploitation through peonage.
19. Activist groups aided federal efforts to crack down on peonage in the South.
20. Legal definitions of voluntary versus involuntary servitude were complex in relation to peonage.
21. Peonage kept many Southern workers trapped in cycles of poverty and oppression for generations.
22. Anti-peonage laws were unevenly enforced throughout the South after the Civil War.
23. Peonage and vagrancy laws were interconnected systems of coercive labor practices.
24. Black Codes often targeted vagrants and freedmen for prosecution under peonage laws.
25. Louisiana enacted some of the harshest peonage laws during Reconstruction.
26. Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi also had extensive systems of peonage during this era.
27. Harsh peonage laws entangled many vulnerable workers in endless cycles of debt.
28. Activists argued that peonage amounted to a system of quasi-slavery in the South.
29. International outrage over peonage in the South added pressure for federal intervention.
30. Investigations of peonage required African American agents willing to go undercover.
31. Prosecutors faced many challenges and resistance bringing successful peonage cases.
32. Peonage thrived under the convict lease system in Southern prisons and coal mines.
33. Convict leasing spawned a system of quasi-slavery linked to peonage practices.
34. Southern writers like Richard Wright described exploitative peonage systems in their works.
35. Migrant workers left the South in part to escape peonage and sharecropping systems.
36. Peonage practices continued until economic changes undermined the plantation system.
37. Agricultural mechanization reduced the pool of captive labor fueling peonage.
38. The collapse of the plantation economy helped lead to the demise of peonage systems.
39. Civil rights activism shined a spotlight on abuses within peonage and sharecropping.
40. Peonage cases prosecuted under anti-slavery statutes demonstrated their broader logic.
41. Civil rights activism raised broad challenges to coercive labor practices like peonage.
42. Federal intervention and economic change slowly undermined systems of peonage.
43. Historians have debated the voluntary versus coercive nature of peonage and sharecropping.
44. Peonage could involve physical violence but often functioned through economic coercion.
45. Peonage laws differed from traditional indentured servitude arrangements.
46. African American peons faced conditions akin to reimposed slavery in many cases.
47. Reformers saw eradicating peonage as crucial to advancing civil rights in the South.
48. Government officials acknowledged that peonage flourished due to societal acquiescence.
49. Family members were often entrapped together within peonage systems for generations.
50. Peonage laws clearly violated the spirit of the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery.
51. Activists compared peonage to a system of perpetual colonial bondage.
52. Civil rights histories have highlighted the central role of peonage systems in the South.
53. Scholars study peonage and sharecropping to understand post-slavery labor systems.
54. Peonage cases helped establish legal precedents against involuntary servitude.
55. Victims of peonage suffered loss of autonomy, income, mobility and basic human dignity.
56. Many Southerners denied that peonage amounted to a form of neo-slavery.
57. Radical activists called for outright insurrection to overthrow peonage and sharecropping.
58. Historians debate the degrees of agency, resistance and oppression within peonage.
59. Civil rights historians have exposed the brutality and tyranny of Southern peonage systems.
60. Peonage represented the continuation of slavery by other means in the postbellum South.

Common Phases

1. Systems of peonage
2. Trapped in peonage
3. Conditions of peonage
4. Escape peonage
5. End peonage
6. Break peonage
7. Trapped in cycles of peonage
8. Cycle of peonage
9. Undermine peonage
10. Targets for peonage
11. Vulnerable to peonage
12. Ensnared in peonage
13. Era of peonage
14. Illegal peonage
15. Enforce anti-peonage laws