Civil Wrongs is a series of investigations into historic injustices and the impact they have today. This radio version is adapted from a two-part podcast produced by WKNO and the Institute for Public Service Reporting. See below for links to the podcasts.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK, HOST
A couple of years ago, this station and the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis teamed up on a series we call "Civil Wrongs," which looks at historic incidents that still affect us today. The writer of that series is Laura Kebede-Twumasi. Thank you for joining us.
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: You're welcome.
BLANK: This latest series is a two-part podcast, and yesterday, we aired a radio version of the first part. It's about how a sheriff's deputy in Arkansas in the 1930s was convicted in federal court of essentially enslaving a group of Black men. He thought he could get away with it because there is a loophole in the Constitution.
Can you talk about this loophole and how he exploited that?
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: Yeah, so the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bans slavery, but it does have an exception for people who are convicted of a crime. They can be forced to work. And so he rounded up men who he charged with vagrancy, but he wanted to be able to use them on land he was leasing from the school district to clear timber.
BLANK: And I want to encourage our listeners to visit wknofm.org and explore this whole podcast. But, Laura, this tees up the second half of the season, which brings us to the modern day. You became interested in ways that certain vulnerable populations can find themselves in situations bordering on free labor, and this often starts in the periphery of the legal system. How does this work?
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: So, one of the connections to the modern day that we looked into was this concept of "work therapy."
There's generally two ways that people get in. It could be voluntarily because they have tried other substance abuse treatment programs and it wasn't working for them or they don't have enough insurance to cover treatment. Or it could be through a court order. A lot of these can be prison diversion programs, which keeps people out of jail, but it also can route them into situations where they're not getting paid for work that they're doing every day.
BLANK: One of the people you talked to was a woman named Kayla Leinenweber who entered a program voluntarily. And her reason for that was, 1) she was having a hard time recovering from substance abuse and 2) her insurance company would not cover additional treatment. So tell us about the type of program that she entered.
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: The program that she entered was Synergy, which has been around 30 years or so in Memphis.
And for Kayla's case she talked about how she and a few other women were sent to a Kellogg's plant in Rossville and they worked there about 12 hours a day. They would clean different machinery and the hope was that in exchange for this work, she would be able to have also individual therapy and gain some more tools to stay on the path of recovery. But when you're working 12 hours a day, there was no time, from what she told me, to to do that kind of treatment.
BLANK: You talk to a number of people involved in you know, the mental health system. What are some things they said about this work therapy model?
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: A lot of them didn't know about it, even though they had been in this field for decades in some cases, looking into what is most effective for helping people in the path of recovery. So that was one part.
People that were actually familiar with work therapy programs said that that idea can come from this notion that addiction and substance abuse is a moral failure rather than a medical issue. And so that can change the way professionals think about treatment depending on how they see is the root of it.
BLANK: In your Civil Wrongs podcast, you point out that there are lawsuits about this and a big one still going on right now is with the Salvation Army. They have a six-month residential program where patients work up to eight hours a day in their thrift store warehouses, and this amounts to an unpaid labor force of about 75,000 people. What is the case that the operators of these programs are making that they're not exploiting people?
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: Well, Salvation Army, especially, this is not their first time in court over this. And so for years what they have been saying is that people aren't coming to them for a job. People are coming to them for guidance. And so they don't even see them as employees. They see them as beneficiaries of the programs. And so they also say that there is a trade-off where people can get a sense of purpose, and that it's not about exploiting people.
BLANK: Just this past week the Associated Press published an investigation into what is called convict leasing, which is pretty common. Prisoners across the country are used as labor, but what they found was that these prisoners, these inmates, are working for private companies. In fact, many really big American retail companies.
How are these work therapy programs related to these penal system programs and what kind of questions do they raise about civil rights?
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: So in that investigation, the Associated Press talked about how some of these people at prisons, they also had been convicted of crimes related to substance abuse. And so they kind of were funneled into that same pipeline of labor.
Some of the things that stood out to me from that investigation they talked about: one of the Arkansas spokespeople for operations like this, they said that at the end of the day, this is a way for people to feel a sense of purpose that they've accomplished something and that they get something in return for the work that they're doing.
The language used is very similar, but also the exploitations are very similar. There was a sheriff that they mentioned in that investigation who pleaded guilty in 2021, where he siphoned off some of the profits from these work-release programs to him and his family members. And so he was sentenced to prison for that. But there is just a high opportunity for exploitation in these programs.
BLANK: Laura, one of the reasons you started this Civil Wrongs series was to show people the connections between the past—and in this case, the roots of slavery in America—things that are happening today. And I'm wondering what do you think as a reporter we should take away from this podcast series?
KEBEDE-TWUMASI: The thing I want people to take away is that nothing happens in a vacuum. That there's reasons for why the reality we see around us happens. It doesn't just happen without background, but we don't spend a lot of time looking at that background and how it connects to today. And so that's really the purpose of this series: to be able to learn about parts of history that are not well known, that aren't taught widely. But then also to see why does that matter today. And how can that inform how we make decisions in the future.
LISTEN TO THE CIVIL WRONGS PODCASTS OF SEASON 3: "NOTHIN' FOR OUR LABOR"
Part 1: The Sheriff and the Sharecroppers
Description: In the middle of a strike by a rare interracial labor union in the 1930s, a sheriff’s deputy in Earle, Arkansas named Paul Peacher falsely arrested more than a dozen Black men for vagrancy and got them sentenced to work on land he was leasing. In this episode, you’ll meet Peacher’s great-niece and relatives of two of the Black men that Peacher enslaved. You’ll also hear the story behind the labor union that helped push for basic workers’ rights we have today.
Part 2: Treatment or Punishment
Description: Lawsuits nationwide threaten unpaid labor in exchange for substance abuse treatment. Program participants are suing work therapy programs for being treated like an unpaid workforce. Centers say they are beneficiaries, not employees. But does work in and of itself help treat substance use disorders? We talk to experts, break down the legal background and arguments, and talk to two people who have been through work therapy programs in Memphis.
