On Sept. 15, 1963, the bomb that killed four girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., showed America just how far we had to go to fulfill the promise of justice and equality for all, even a century after the 13th Amendment ended slavery. Half a century after the bombing, the struggle is not over, in part because language in that same amendment still undermines the equal humanity of more than 7 million Americans who have been convicted of a crime. Ratified at the end of the Civil War, the amendment abolished slavery, with one critical exception: Slavery and involuntary servitude actually remain lawful as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted. In other words, according to this so-called punishment clause, if you get pulled over with the wrong controlled substance in your trunk, theres nothing in the 13th Amendment to ensure you cant be considered a slave of the state. The punishment clause was taken directly from the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 and reflected the belief of the time that hard work was essential to prisoners moral rehabilitation. But the language was also ambiguous enough to be grossly abused. Soon, the clause was being used to reinstitute slavery under another guise.
Posted on: Sat, 16 Aug 2014 10:40:22 +0000
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