Graduation Year

2026

Date of Submission

4-2026

Document Type

Campus Only Senior Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Department

History

Reader 1

Daniel Livesay

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Abstract

This thesis examines the reconfiguration of racial and labor subordination in the United States from Reconstruction to the present, arguing that the legal abolition of slavery did not dismantle the economic and institutional structures on which it rested. It traces a continuous trajectory through which law and the criminal justice system were systematically weaponized to reconstitute slavery's essential functions under successive institutional forms, each serving as a deliberate mechanism for the extraction of Black labor in service of private and state interests. The analysis culminates in an examination of the modern carceral state, concluding that contemporary prison labor programs continue to reproduce these same structural dynamics.

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