Louisa Brown spent six months in jail, amassing the evidence needed to finally prove her free status in court. Yet upon doing so, she was not released by the Richmond city jail. She was now expected to reimburse the state for the cost of her six-month incarceration. That fee was too high for her to pay, and so Brown was auctioned by the city. Brown joined a growing group of free Black Virginians who became practically enslaved due to debt peonage.
As a debt peon, Brown was not technically enslaved, but her situation bore striking parallels to the practice. She was required under the law to spend 50 years laboring, uncompensated, for a member of Richmond’s elite. Contemporary observers stated that debt peons were subjected to the same level of violence and deprivation that enslaved people received at the hands of their enslavers.
The system was so exploitative that the Richmond Society of Friends, a group known for its anti-slavery work, spoke out publicly against the practice, arguing that it was contrary to the “beneficent principles established by the Supreme Rules of the Universe.” In response, the Virginia Legislature took steps to limit some of the worst abuses inherent in the system, although they did nothing to stop it entirely.
None other than Frederick Douglass also leveled criticism at debt peonage. In 1848 the great orator, writer, and abolitionist published an article in his newspaper, The North Star, sarcastically noting the “wisdom of Virginia law-makers” and condemning what he identified as “a glorious commentary upon the professedly free institutions of Republican America!”
Debt peonage was designed by lawmakers to obscure its clear connections to white supremacy. Purchasers of the labor of debt peons could tell themselves the “color-blind” story that any person who contracted debts should be expected to pay them, and that they were entitled under the law to the labor of people who did not pay their jail debt.
But with the distance of history, any reasonable observer today can see the systemic racism inherent in this system. No white Richmonders were auctioned at the public market because they could not pay their jail debts. Only Black Richmonders were required to reimburse the jailer for their incarceration. And most of the incarcerated individuals were there because of simply “being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” as Brown, a free woman, was.
White fear of Black freedom made it relatively easy for lawmakers to pass legislation requiring free Black people to carry passes. A complementary legal and economic system oriented toward the supremacy of property rights made it only “fair” that free people pay their debts.