Forced prison labor continues to enslave Black Americans

As Juneteenth celebrations and paraphernalia begin to litter our social timelines, we must remember that slavery has yet to be truly abolished. To this day, in prisons and jails across the country, government agencies and corporations legally exploit forced prison labor thanks to an exception baked into the 13th Amendment that allows for slavery as criminal punishment. As someone who was enslaved under this exception, left unprotected by the sacrosanct 13th Amendment, I understand its design intimately. Here in Illinois, tens of thousands of incarcerated people are forced to work under the thr...