Out of six Black incarcerated people suing Alabama’s governor and prison commissioner to abolish prison slavery, 32-year-old Trayveka Stanley is the only woman. For over a decade, she’s been behind bars. In February 2024, her mother died, and Stanley was denied a day off work to grieve. This callous treatment brought her to a new low.
In 2022, Alabama supposedly outlawed forced, unpaid prison labor, yet still extracts over $450 million from incarcerated workers annually. While working “free-world” jobs, like at McDonald’s, prison officials guzzled her wages. The day Stanley’s mother passed, she was on the prison garbage crew. Months later, she received her last disciplinary report for missing work the day after, even though it was the fault of the prison’s transportation.
What happened to Stanley can’t be divorced from history. The slave trade became illegal in 1800. After slavery’s supposed abolition in 1865, Black people began populating jails. Prison officials brokered deals with private companies for forced labor. In 1928, Alabama became the last state to end this practice formally. Its constitution wasn’t amended until 2022.
For centuries, this country has desperately clung to exploiting Black people.
But, from enslaved ancestors sabotaging and escaping plantations to Black labor unions and prison uprisings, people like Stanley remind us that Black resistance will never go away.