this is william freeman. i quickly learned that william freeman was an afro native teenager who was convicted in swore he didn't commit despite a he was convicted and sentenced state prison.e auburn the auburn state prison was distinctive because it enclosed factories where prison prisoners were least two. private companies usually for $0.30 a day. the prison pocketed all of this money. the prisoners received no cut william freeman was forced to manufacture animal harnesses, to dye silk and to make carpets. these goods were sold throughout new york state to consumers. and this was my second surprise. i thought convict leasing in new york in the 1840s in factories is like many people associated convict leasing with the post-civil war south and also with agricultural labor. i was familiar with important works like michelle alexander's, the new jim crow and douglas blackmon's slavery by another name, and these books along with ava duvernay's film 13th, suggest that profit driven carceral practices began with the

w so who was william freeman?illiam freemanup grew up in auburn and the black neighborhood of new guinea. he was born in 1824 into auburn's most prominent black family. his enslaved grapants were revered as the founders of new guinea william freeman grewp in a close knit lively social world organized on private gatherings, church, antislavery action, work.ased education and but alongside william g freeman somethingan else was growing tht was the auburn state prison. the auburn state prison internationally famous because it innovated a novel form of incarceration. unlike other prisons at the time the auburn prison was not established primarily to punish or to confine or to be gained people rather it was built by businessmen for the explicit purpose of stimulating economic development. the building of this prison in 1816 caused $20000 in state funding immediately to flow into auburn. and at the time auburn was a tiny little village with fewer than 2000 people. $20000 is the equivalent of half a million dollars in to

so in new york state, you do not have the same convict leasing that william freeman experienced where he was. his work was being leased by private companies that no longer exists in new york state. now, today in new york state, there is massive manufacturing. but what incarcerated people build in new york state is materials that are then sold only to the state itself. so things like license plates, for example. so that is a difference, you know, in some ways. but it's still forced labor and that's why the work of 13th forward is so important. 13th forward is working to end forced labor in prisons in new york state. they get. oh, yes, they do get paid, but they get paid in new york state by the way, there are plenty of incarcerated people in the united states who get paid nothing, who are forced to labor and get paid nothing. and that is true in many, many states in new york state, people in prisons are paid for their work, but they are vastly underpaid. so they get paid, for example, the men who make license in the in auburn today, they get paid $0.65 an hour. so this not a living wag

so i want to really honor their courage in testifying on behalf of william freeman. so some of them did that and and since then, some of them didn't. some of the members of his family and his community had difficulty hearing his challenge for some of the same reasons that the white people did, which was that they were also part of an economic system. they were also embedded in auburn. but the other reason was that, of course, they weren't clairvoyant. so why did why did frederick douglass not rise up against the beginnings of convict labor? one really important answer is that there was no way to know from the perspective of especially the mid-19th century, what convict labor was going to turn into. there was no way to know that. there was no way to imagine mass racialized incarceration when black people were disproportionately incarcerated in the auburn state prison during freeman's lifetime. but actual numbers were very small or were relatively small, and there were people who were upset about it at the time, and there were people who were critiquing that at the tim

joseph bradley had been appointed by republican samuel freeman miller, republican william strong republicanford, democrat stephen johnson. field, another democratic appointee. let's go back to david davis. what was his story. david davis is fascinating. so as you said, david davis is from illinois. he had been a very close confidant and friend of abraham lincoln. he had been appointed by lincoln to the court. davis was, as you said, widely viewed as an independent in the 19th century, independent, i mean, genuinely independent, free of either political party. most assumed because of his reputation as an independent, that the four justices congress appointed who then got to choose the fifth justice, the 15th member of the committee that they would choose davis and the popular belief was that davis probably favored tilden, though nobody knew for certain. but what ends up happening is that at the last minute, literally, as congress is going to vote on this bill, that will create commission, illinois davis's home state, the state legislature here in illinois, decides to select davis as their ne