The War Over the 13th Amendment and Modern Day Slavery
In the late 1960s, a group of Arkansas prison inmates sued the state Commissioner of Corrections over conditions in what was then called the Cummins Farm, a 16,500-acre Old South-style plantation staffed by gangs of prisoners. Among their claims was one that life on the Farm was slavery, and thus a violation of the 13th Amendment, which prohibits “slavery or involuntary servitude...