The writers of the 13th Amendment, seeking to protect the power of the white ruling class, created a legal scheme for owning slaves under the Constitution of the United States. They nationalized it so that all the states had to do was put forth a plan of action to systematically marginalize, criminalize, and imprison its primary subjects—i.e., the descendants of African slaves and other unfortunate people.

Going back in history to follow the trail of actions taken right after passage of the 13th Amendment, you’ll see the persecution clearly beginning with the abandonment of Reconstruction, Black Codes, Peonage, Segregation, institutional racism, classism, the War on Drugs, the Iran and Nicaraguan Contras drugs-for-weapons-program, the War on Poverty, the FBI’s Counterintelligence Program to destabilize and defeat the 1960’s social change movements and, presto, the rise of the American Prison Empire.