The 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution abolished slavery and involuntary servitude, with one exception: punishing people convicted of crimes.
Curtis Ray Davis II fit that exception when he was found guilty of second-degree murder in 1992. For the majority of his more than 25 years at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, built on the grounds of the Angola slave plantation, he was forced to work for just 4 cents an hour.
“We were in the Deep South … picking cotton, picking okra, peas, pecans, shucking corn, all at the point of a gun,” said Davis, now 53 and an activist for prisoners’ rights and author of the book "Slave State: Evidence of Apartheid in America."
